El Mágico
The life, downfall, and miracles of one of football’s greatest unsung geniuses: Mágico González. A story of dazzling talent, midnight dribbles, and the eternal duel between glory and self-destruction
Mágico González
Passion for a player or a team is, by definition, irrational, and the corollaries of this irrationality—blind, unwavering faith and sheer adoration—often bring us trouble or embarrassment, as they tend to weaken the consistency and argumentative strength of our evaluations.
In some cases, however, we can overlook logic and surrender to pure passion, despite its inherent limitations. So, allow me this indulgence—for once, I will say that Salvadoran Jorge Alberto González Barillas was a marvelous and, above all, infallible player. If I analyze his career through a critic’s lens, I see a sky filled with question marks, doubts, and uncertainties.
The narrative surrounding him is often overflowing with clichéd rhetoric—ah, the “flawed genius” trope!—a worn-out and questionable fascination that, at first, did not help me appreciate him.
Even Maradona’s words—
- “The greatest player of all time.”
- “Technically, he was better than me; I have never seen anything like him.”
- “He was better than me. I come from planet Earth, he comes from another galaxy.”
—while captivating and authoritative, have always left me half-convinced.
So what is it that makes Mágico González so special?
What places him halfway between reality and legend, like the wild detectives in Roberto Bolaño’s novels?
For me, beyond his dissolute lifestyle, his reputation as a ladies’ man, his Indio-like features, his passion for nightlife and alcohol, his laziness elevated to the status of life’s only true principle, and his outright rejection of the obligations and burdens that come with wearing a prestigious jersey (as is well known, Mágico was close to joining Diego’s Barcelona after impressing on a tour with the Catalans, and also had links to PSG), what makes the Central American fantasista feel almost like an exile—a vestige of a world that had already been discarded by football history in the ’70s and ’80s—is the pure joy that emanates from every single technical gesture he performed.
A perpetual fugitive, much like Bolaño’s wild detectives, a man out of time, yet eternally unforgettable.
Beyond the clichés of the “cursed genius”, the prodigy who never reached the pinnacle because, deep down, he didn’t care to, what still fills my eyes with wonder is the pure aesthetic joy of watching the Salvadoran maestro’s magic, even today.
He remains one of the most technically gifted and unpredictable players of all time. And yes, I admit it—perhaps this is an irrational statement, but I firmly believe it: Mágico González was a sublime talent.
From my poetic perspective, it matters little that he won so little, that he spent nearly his entire European career at modest Cádiz.
(By the way, in 1984, he had a mythical season, leaving La Liga in awe and coming close to winning the Pichichi—while playing as both a trequartista and a winger. Because, for us, winning means getting straight to the point, but for Mágico, it didn’t work that way—yet, in his own way, he won too. And let’s be clear: his high-level seasons in Spain were not few.)
“I admit I’m no saint. I love the nightlife, and if you ask me, I’d recommend a little taste of it to everyone—provided you also get something done during the day. I know I’m irresponsible, a terrible professional, and that I’m probably wasting the opportunity of a lifetime. I know all that. But I have a ‘locura’ in my head: I don’t like to think of football as a job. If I did, I wouldn’t be myself anymore. I play only for fun.”
— Mágico González, in an interview on Spanish TV in the 1980s
A player like Mágico González shatters all the usual oppositions between idealists and pragmatists, between those who worship beauty and those who worship results.
He discards those debates with the arrogance of someone who soars at stratospheric heights, proving that the eternal gratitude of an Andalusian city or a struggling Central American nation can fill the heart far more than a trophy or a place in the history books.
And if we’re being honest, he did achieve results.
His Cádiz lived its greatest moments thanks to his unpredictable brilliance—his unorthodox dribbles, his circus-like goals, his joyful, mischievous runs.
The same is true for El Salvador’s national team. It was his decisive goals against Mexico that propelled them to the 1982 World Cup in Spain.
There, despite playing for a weak, semi-professional squad that stood no chance against the world’s footballing powerhouses, Mágico still earned mentions in some “best XI” selections of the tournament—this, despite losing all three matches, and losing them badly.
The team was fragile, but its leader was not. He tried everything, proving that, while he played for fun, he also played for his team.
In Italy, a player like Mágico González would have quickly become a target for all the various factions that dominate the football debate, even today.
I can already imagine him being mocked by the Brera school for his lack of fighting spirit, misunderstood by the majority of pragmatists and defensive-minded tacticians, who would see him as a player without a defined role, too busy romancing the ball instead of adhering to structure.
He would have been despised by Sacchi’s rigid disciples, who would brand him lazy and shameless in prioritizing beauty over effectiveness.
With Arrigo Sacchi, a player like him wouldn’t have lasted longer than a glass of water—both for character reasons and technical ones.
(Sacchi’s football viewed the “poetry without rules” of South Americans as something completely incompatible with his ideology.)
But luckily for him, the Salvadoran Magician, after bewitching his small homeland, found refuge in Andalusia—perhaps the only place in Europe that could have truly embraced and celebrated him the way he deserved.
And in 1980s football, he shined as brightly as only a handful of true artists could.
Everything else, as far as I’m concerned, is secondary.
