“The blow in the final in Seville in 1986 will never be forgotten”

Most veteran FC Barcelona fans remember the 1986 European Cup final against Steaua Bucharest, played at the Sánchez Pizjuán in Seville and decided in favor of the Romanian team in a penalty shootout in which the culé squad outlasted all his shots, one of the worst experiences of his life as a Barça fan. Josep Moratalla and Raon Maria Calderé, two football players from the Barça youth team, recalled to RAC1 how they experienced that bitter pill. “It’s something that will go away as long as I live,” admitted Moratalla, who revealed how he felt when English coach Terry Venables ordered him to replace the great star Bernd Schuster, with the score at 0-0 and about to enter the extension . “Schuster must have been angry about the change and left the field in a taxi with the final being played. Terry gave me instructions and I left in the middle of the field,” commented the culé youth player, originally who is a center back.

“Imagine how we were in the locker room after the round. We were looking for ‘Bernardo’ and he wasn’t there. He left in a taxi, so we didn’t see him there, we saw him later at the hotel,” he reminded.

“It was a historic opportunity and we failed, hence the difficulty,” he commented.

Calderé did not play in the European Cup final as he was suspended for accumulating cautions in the match before the final, the famous comeback against Göteborg at the Camp Nou. The curious thing, as expressed by the former midfielder, is that against the Swedes he did not know that a card would bring him the final. “I feel bad, but they didn’t tell me that I didn’t see any yellow cards against Göteborg and I asked about it. The next day the direct representative came to me and told me ‘I feel bad, you won’t . you can play in the final’. I saw him coming, I saw him and he gestured to me….”. Calderé is sure that, if he had played, “something would have happened” about another possible result of the final. Another curiosity is Calderé’s comment on the final on TVE with José Ángel de la Casa, as well as the deadly penalty shootout. “I had a terrible time, it was one of the worst days of my life, I don’t know what to say about the penalties,” he admitted. Calderé had a bad time another day, a few months later, when the squad called for the resignation of the club’s president, Josep Lluís Núñez, in the famous ‘Hesperia Mutiny’, and he appeared in a central position in the picture. “We made a fool of ourselves in the Mutiny, anyone, even our teammates. That day, I wore the jersey for the first time and because it was in the photo, when I got home I threw it away,” he recalled. “We were fundamentally right in a collective demand, but we’re upset in the form, you cannot ask for the resignation of a president,” both admitted.

Calderé and Moratalla also remembered their good moments in that decade of the 80s “11 years have passed since Cruyff’s great player league, it was in black and white. And I came to the first team in the 80s when I was 25 or 26. years old, That’s why the 1985 League marked me a lot I came and told them, we have to make a mes here And in the first League game we won 0-3 against Real in Madrid and I scored in my first game,” he said.

Moratalla won the 1982 European Cup Winners’ Cup title, at the Camp Nou against Standard de Liege, where he acted as a starter, also oddly as a midfielder due to the many casualties. “The Cup Winners’ Cup had a positive effect on me, for winning it at home as a home player,” he summed up. “But that 1986 European Cup was the dream of our lives and the fans because it was the first, it was a very desirable historical moment and it escaped us,” he said.