When Paco Gento arrived in 1953, he thought Real Madrid were too big for him but that was nowhere near as big as he would make them. He joined a club that had not won the league in two decades, since before the civil war; by the time he retired 18 years later, it was the biggest, most successful in the world and he had set a record still unmatched half a century later and likely never to be beaten.
Nicknamed La Galerna, the Gale, after the wind that tore through the Cantabrian coast like he tore through defences, Gento died on Tuesday, aged 88. In a career spent almost entirely at Real Madrid he won 12 league titles and six European Cups. No footballer can match that; only two clubs have won more and one is the institution he helped transform, where he was the honorary president.
