He has been saddled with a nickname that makes him sound more like a notorious war criminal or a reviled serial killer than a celebrated professional footballer – The Butcher of Bilbao.
So it should come as no great surprise that Andoni Goikoetxea, the former Athletic Club Bilbao and Spain centre-half, is not a particular fan of his unflattering sobriquet.
Or, for that matter, his reputation, which endures some 34 years after he hung up his boots, as one of the hardest, dirtiest, nastiest players in the entire history of the beautiful game.
“I was lucky enough to interview Goikoetxea when I wrote my book on Athletic Club Bilbao,” said Christopher Evans, the Welsh journalist and author of Los Leones, an English language history of the world-famous Basque institution.
“He's also known as Corazon de Leon, which means Lionheart in Spanish, over there. He gets called El Gigante de Alonsotegi too. That means the Giant of Alonsotegi, which is the village outside of Bilbao where he comes from. He much prefers those. He doesn't like the butcher moniker one little bit.”
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Goikoetxea’s name is still mentioned regularly alongside the likes of Billy Bremner, Rino Gattuso, Claudio Gentile, Ron Harris, Terry Hurlock, Norman Hunter, Vinnie Jones, Roy Keane, Paolo Montero, Kevin Muscat, Miguel Angel Nadal and Graeme Souness when there are debates about football’s tough guys.
Indeed, he was labelled the most violent player of all-time in a poll carried out by The Times, the paper of record, back in 2007.
But is it unfair to label an individual who helped Athletic to win back-to-back La Liga titles, a Copa del Rey and a Supercopa de Espana in the 1980s and Spain to reach the Euro ‘84 final as a hatchet man? Is the 39-times capped 68-year-old entitled to feel slightly aggrieved about how he is remembered? Or did he bring it entirely upon himself with his cynical on-field conduct?
This, after all, was the defender who broke Diego Maradona’s ankle with a reckless challenge that was described as “one of the most brutal fouls ever delivered in the history of modern football” in a league match against Barcelona in the Camp Nou in 1983.
Maradona, who was sidelined for nearly four months as the result of a tackle which referee Bartolome Jimenez Madrid decided only merited a yellow card, later recalled that it sounded “like wood breaking” when his adversary caught him viciously from behind.
His notoriety grew when it later emerged that he had paid to have the adidas boots which he had been wearing when he scythed down his Argentinian rival framed in a glass case. However, that is something of an urban myth, is only partially true.
The player had broken down in tears when he learned he had received a 10 match ban from the Royal Spanish Football Federation four days after the Barcelona game.
But that same night he played and scored as Athletic came from behind to beat Lech Poznan in a European Cup first round tie at San Mamés in Bilbao and progress. He was carried off the field on the shoulders of his team mates following the final whistle. He was so touched by the gesture than he never wore the boots again. They take pride of place in his Las Arenas home to this day.
"I don't want this to be misinterpreted,” he once said. “I don't keep them like someone who keeps a piece of game. These boots symbolize for me the duality of football - on the one hand, the harassment I suffered after Diego's injury, on the other, how emotional the tribute at San Mamés was."
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The Maradona incident was by no means an isolated event. Two seasons earlier he had badly damaged Bernd Schuster’s knee with a rash tackle. The Barcelona and West Germany midfielder recovered after a nine month lay off and played on for both club and country for years. For many, though, he was never quite the same again.
In the Copa del Rey final in the Bernabeu the following year, too, Goikoetxea had kicked Maradona in the chest when a mass brawl erupted between Athletic, who had edged the game 1-0, and Barcelona following the final whistle. There is, then, a lengthy charge sheet against Goiko.
Yet, Victor Munoz, the former Zaragoza, Barcelona, Sampdoria, St Mirren and Spain midfielder who played both against the centre-back at club level and with him on the international stage, is adamant that his old friend has been unfairly maligned over the years and was a far greater talent than he is given credit for.
“Andoni was a very good player for Athletic and Spain and is a legend in Bilbao,” he said. “You know, I think he has bad luck. Both Diego and Bernd were injured after being tackled by him and that became a big problem for him in his career. If you are a supporter of Barcelona he is a killer.
“But if you are a fan of Athletic or of Spain he is a hero. He was a very good central defender with Athletic and with Spain. Yes, he was very hard, but he always played with personality. He was either a hero or a killer, it depended on who you supported. He was either one or the other.
“But Athletic as a team were very aggressive in those days, not just Andoni. Those Athletic-Barcelona games at that time were like the Barcelona-Real Madrid games of today. There was an extreme rivalry. As I say, I think he was very unlucky. He was a better footballer than those incidents.”
“We had to play a different way in that match because we had lost three or four players,” he said. “Andoni had played with authority, had played very hard, in that tournament. But we could not play him and several others in the final. France had a very good team with Alain Giresse, Michel Platini and Jean Tigana. But we missed those players.”
Arthur Albiston played for Scotland in a World Cup qualifier against a Spain side that contained Goikoetxea at Hampden later that year. The Manchester United great helped Jock Stein’s side to record a famous 3-1 triumph over their feted opponents in front of a crowd of 74,299.
The Athletic centre-half scored for the visitors’ that night. Albiston, though, can only remember the sensational goal which Kenny Dalglish lashed into the top corner of the net. He, too, reckons that an individual who was one of the eminent footballers of that generation was preceded by a reputation which perhaps did him a disservice.
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“I certainly knew of his name and supposed character before that game,” he said. “I appreciated he was one of the top players in the Spanish game at that time. But he did not stand out that evening at all. I can remember Mo (Johnston) got two that night and Kenny scored his famous one. It was obviously an amazing night to be involved in. But I do not recall Goikoetxea being especially difficult to play against.
“Football was different in those pre-VAR days. You got away with a lot more as a defender. Now you have cameras covering every angle, it is almost a non-tackling sport. That has its good parts and its bad bits. The good side of it is that skilful players no longer get kicked off the park. But I don’t remember him being, even for that time, this ferocious competitor.
“I do recall Emilio Butragueno coming on for Spain in that match and being a real handful. He was very fast and very clever. But Goikoetxea? He didn’t stand out for me at in that game. I know he scored for them in the second half. But it was Butragueno who, maybe because he was the guy I was trying to stop, caught my eye.”
“He was a brilliant player and is a hero to Athletic fans to this day,” he said. “He is the most famous Athletic player internationally. But that is probably to do with the Maradona incident. He must be sick of talking about it. I thought, ‘He's not going to like me bringing it up’.
“But he was absolutely fine, he spoke about it. He explained to me that he had buried the hatchet with Maradona years later. They had met when Maradona was playing for Sevilla in 1992 and had a coffee. They actually became quite friendly after that. There is a photograph of them together in his autobiography.
“I don’t think he was a dirty player. He was robust, yes, he didn’t take any prisoners, for sure, but for me he was just an old school 1980s defender. If you watch footage of Maradona playing at that time, everyone kicked him. It is a miracle that he survived in the game for as long as he did.
“In my experience, Goikoetxea is an absolute gentleman. He agreed to write the foreword to my book and when we had the launch in Bilbao he, completely unbeknown to me, turned up. He came over, said hello, introduced himself to my wife and two sons, stood up and gave a little speech. He is such a nice bloke.”
The Athletic Club Bilbao fans who will cheer on the La Liga high flyers in the first leg of the Europa League quarter-final double header against Rangers at Ibrox on Thursday night will be hoping their heroes display the same "robustness" that their favourite son did in his heyday, but none of his niceness.
