One by one, 16,389 people stood to salute the Commander. First they got to their feet, then they applauded and then, as José Luis Morales, the man with the military title, made it to the edge of the pitch, they began bowing, repeating his name like some Gregorian chant. On the touchline, his coach – the fourth he has had this season and the one that might just have set him free at last – was waiting to welcome him back. They had barely been working together a week, but it was turning out nicely, hope let in again. “When good things happen to friends and family, you’re happy for them; this time it’s my turn,” the Villarreal forward said softly.
“Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine this,” Morales said. At the start of this week, he had started just three games all season and not scored a goal. A footballer capable of the ridiculous, who scored from 50 yards last season, he is 36 now and hadn’t begun a match since September. Quique Setién didn’t play him, José Rojo Martin “Pacheta” didn’t either and, as for Miguel Ángel Tena, the caretaker coach didn’t get the chance. Morales, meanwhile, hadn’t scored in eight months. Then in the past week he played twice in four days, starting Marcelino García Toral’s first two games as the new coach, and did so five times. Yes, five.
On Thursday, Morales scored with two minutes left to take Villarreal into extra time against fourth-tier Zamora in the Copa del Rey and then, to everyone’s relief, scored the winner as well. Four days later, an outrageous hat-trick against Osasuna gave the new manager a 3-1 win on his league return at the club he took top for the first time in their history in 2015 but where he was sacked the following summer. To put it the way Morales did, he had picked up more fantasy football points in one day than in the whole season so far – and, yes, he does pick himself. Well, someone had to.
Now, maybe Marcelino will continue to do so. Successful just about everywhere – he took Racing Santander and Recreativo de Huelva to their best finishes, Valencia to the Copa del Rey title, not that it helped much, and Athletic to their first trophy in 30 years – when Marcelino was sacked by Villarreal last time, it was more about personalities than play, the boundaries of authority pushed with a president you do not push. The fallout has been fixed now, not least because they needed it to be: Setién had been sacked, perhaps prematurely, and while Pacheta thought he had won the lottery, inheriting a talented squad and problems he trusted were temporary and with simple solutions, they won just once in eight league games. Something had to be done.
Morales went and did it, radio and TV commentators everywhere shouting “Commander!” over and over like some panicking private who’s just accidentally set fire to the officers’ mess. For much of the game Villarreal had struggled against Osasuna, the goalkeeper Filip Jörgensen making a couple of superb saves. But as Jagoba Arrasate put it during his one-question (yes, one) press conference: “There’s an unwritten rule in football that if you let opponents off, you pay for it. We were better until the 1-0; after that, the game changed.”
After that, Morales appeared. He tapped in the first and then, as it opened up, took Osasuna apart, scoring twice more. “Truly brilliant goals,” Marcelino called them: auténticos golazos. That’s one word for them. Well, two. Another would be absurd. He does like a golazo, that’s for sure. A man with a taste for the Maradonian, whose Goals Tape collection – it’s what we had before YouTube, kids – is as good as just about anyone’s, had got a hat-trick with which only Kike García could compete, and maybe Leo Messi.
On the first think Gazza against Scotland, only much, much better, and without the ball bouncing. Or maybe that Santi Cazorla assist, only to himself. Morales took a long, looped clearance first time on the volley, popped it first time over the head of Alejandro Catena, turned and ran from his own half into the Osasuna area, 60 yards away, where he dinked it over Herrera and into the net.
For the second he was sent through one on one. Faced by the Osasuna keeper, he swung at the ball and missed it – which is exactly what he intended, Herrera not so much buying the dummy as the entire window display. Left in a heap, Morales stepped past him and somehow smashed a finish into the far corner, putting two more men on the floor.
“The Commander rescues the yellow submarine,” ran one inevitable headline; with him in charge, Villarreal had finally “surfaced”, the report said. “The Commander returns,” ran another, which may be good news for his coach: fast, with an eye for the space beyond a defence and movements that are more studied than they appear, the Commander is the kind of player who should suit Marcelino.
It would be nice to be able to tell some brilliant story about why they call him Comandante Morales – but there isn’t one. He grew up in Getafe, home of the aviation industry, but his parents worked as an electrician and a cleaner, not in the army. There’s no military fixation, no weird obsession with war. No macho man, he’s a footballer not a fighter who averages fewer than four yellow cards a season: if anything he comes across as gentle, even shy. There’s no belligerent boss imposing it on him, either. Instead, they call him that because, well, one day he did and it just kind of stuck.
That night, playing for Levante against Rayo Vallecano in 2016, Morales said he had felt the need to take responsibility for his team so when he scored he performed a salute, and that was pretty much that – patent pending and soon signed off. Still, it’s better than it was.
When Morales played for Fuenlabrada, knocking about in the tercera división, which is not the third division at all but somewhere between the seventh and the 23rd, they called him El Mudo, the mute one. At school they had called him Pedja, because he wore a Mijatovic shirt. Turned down by Real Madrid when he was 11 and still playing futbol sala, never considered by anyone’s academy, he had played at Brunete and Parla before Fuenlabrada and didn’t expect to make it. The day he was spotted, the former Levante goalkeeper and then technical secretary Juan Luis Mora hadn’t come to watch him. He was after a centre-back, but there was something about that tall, slim guy who was fast as anything; he loved taking people on but there was no ego at the end of it.
Levante signed him for their B team even though he was 24, and they are supposed be under-23s. There was a year on loan at Eibar, with whom he won promotion. At 27 he finally made it to primera, where his coach Lucas Alcaraz called him a revelation but claimed that because “he’s ugly and has a beard”, no one noticed him, insisting: “If he was bald and covered in tattoos, everyone would want him.” Which was weird and, anyway, soon they did: Morales went on to become captain and commander at Levante, scoring more first-division goals for them than anyone else ever. He was better, in truth, than the team for which he played.
He endured relegation and brought them up again, but he wasn’t going to do it a second time. And so in 2022, after a decade at Levante, seemingly coming towards the end of his career, he did what he said he wouldn’t do and left. “I’m a slave to my words now, and it’s been very hard, but it’s a professional decision,” he said. There were new experiences left to live and not long left to live them. Yet Unai Emery, the coach who convinced him to come to Villarreal in the first place went, three more men followed, and what little time there was seemed to be slipping away.
On Sunday, though, the day his new manager made his second league debut, Morales scored his second hat-trick, the first he had got in primera, aged 36, and it was so good it was silly. When the third went in, he just sat there on the turf, arms out, spent, a smile crossing his face. Over on the bench, Marcelino was wearing that Marcelino look, wide eyed and happy. When Morales went off a moment later, his best work done, the Cerámica stood to hand him an ovation.
Back when he was just playing for fun, words didn’t always come easy to the man they called El Mudo, and they weren’t coming all that easily now, not after this and no matter that he was the Commander once again. “Good things always come in the end; today was the day. There are a lot of emotions, feelings I don’t know how to explain,” he said. He didn’t really need to. The shy smile on his face did that for him; the ball at his feet did, too. “Football’s very lovely, you know.”
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Real Madrid | 14 | 22 | 35 |
| 2 | Girona | 14 | 15 | 35 |
| 3 | Atletico Madrid | 13 | 18 | 31 |
| 4 | Barcelona | 14 | 13 | 31 |
| 5 | Athletic Bilbao | 14 | 8 | 25 |
| 6 | Real Sociedad | 14 | 8 | 25 |
| 7 | Real Betis | 14 | 2 | 24 |
| 8 | Getafe | 14 | -1 | 19 |
| 9 | Rayo Vallecano | 14 | -2 | 19 |
| 10 | Valencia | 14 | -2 | 19 |
| 11 | Las Palmas | 14 | -2 | 18 |
| 12 | Villarreal | 14 | -4 | 15 |
| 13 | Alaves | 14 | -5 | 15 |
| 14 | Osasuna | 14 | -8 | 14 |
| 15 | Sevilla | 13 | 0 | 12 |
| 16 | Cadiz | 13 | -10 | 10 |
| 17 | Mallorca | 13 | -7 | 9 |
| 18 | Celta Vigo | 14 | -10 | 8 |
| 19 | Granada | 14 | -14 | 7 |
| 20 | Almeria | 14 | -21 | 3 |
