Mexican soccer player Hugo Sánchez during a match with Real Madrid DENIS DOYLE (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Hugo Sánchez carries a triptych in a small black bag that he gives out to fans and strangers. It’s a summary of his impressive career as a football legend in one tiny yellow letter. The document includes the photo of the poster goal he scored with Real Madrid against Logroñés. It is stated that he is the fourth all-time goalscorer in La Liga (234 goals, Benzemá is four) and describes the 12 years he spent on the bench leading teams from Mexico and Spain. He also recalls that his profession is dentistry and he is also a husband and father of three daughters.
At 64, Mexico City-born Sánchez has the same problem as other sports legends. The childhood idol for anyone born in Mexico in the 1980s is now a man in a suit and tie analyzing football on TV. Pelé and Maradona live on in the minds of generations thanks to excellent clips on YouTube. And something similar happens with Hugol. The sports myth began one afternoon in April 1997 on the Pachuca field. Sánchez well remembers the goal he scored that day, the last he wore a jersey for a team, in this case Atlético Celaya, which paired him with Emilio Butragueño and Míchel. It was a volley and from outside the area. “And I hit him with my right foot, the ‘bad’ leg,” says Sánchez, who is coming to Los Angeles to prepare for Sunday’s derby between Real Madrid, the team he loves, and Barcelona, the league leader of the season, and whose reputation has been tarnished by the Arbitration Commission payments scandal.
After eight years as an analyst for the ESPN network, the figure of the Mexican team in California does not go unnoticed. Sánchez says he got the idea to compete in the Olympics when he was 14 years old. The inspiration was his older brother Horacio, who was part of the team that started in Munich in 1972. He went to try it and stayed. He began an intense rhythm with the amateur team that took him across Canada and France. “This preparation helped me because before I turned professional I had 80 caps,” says the analyst.
Sánchez is no stranger to this football market. He made his debut with the Pumas de la UNAM and a short time later was transferred on loan to the San Diego Sockers, which belonged to the San Diego Sockers, which were part of the North American Soccer League, which disappeared in 1984 and whose predecessor was the current competition Major League Soccer. Sánchez is one of the few players to have played for teams in both leagues. He did it for MLS in 1996 when he joined Dallas FC after Spain and Austria. “I was an accomplice and I worked and contributed to the growth of football in the United States,” he says at the sports channel’s downtown Los Angeles offices.
Hugo Sánchez (from behind and wearing number 7) during a game between San Diego and Tampa Bay in August 1979. Lenny Ignelzi (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The forward played three months into the 1978 season and another three months into the 1979 season. He did it with one firm idea in mind: to go to Europe to play. “How could I make myself known? Well, go to the United States. The European press would be watching because there were Beckenbauer, Cruyff, Pelé, George Best, Cubillas and other great figures about to resign,” he affirms. Acting served him well and he was signed by Atlético de Madrid in 1981 after two outstanding campaigns with the Mexico varsity side in which he scored fifty goals.
His arrival in the Spanish courts came as a shock. He was repeatedly greeted with racist slurs by the supporters of his rivals: “Indians, bastard, we’re going to send you to the wall!” “I have experienced discrimination or contempt. It didn’t affect me. The opposite. That made me proud and I felt extra strength,” says Sánchez. Even more than 30 years later, Spanish sport has not managed to ban demeaning statements from the stadiums. This was last seen in the case of Vinicius Júnior, insulted by some fans in Mallorca and kicked by Javier Aguirre’s defence, also a Mexican.
Sánchez has always believed that footballers should not only have strength in their legs. “I’ve had a psychologist since I was 18, since 1976. It wasn’t normal for a psychologist to mentally prepare a team. Now the time has come,” says the former striker, who enlisted the help of the late Dr. Octavio Rivas appreciates. “In my mental work I have visualized many things. I even visualized my goals. It was an exercise he did at the concentration hotel or on the bus to the stadium. I focused on who we were playing against and I even saw how many and how I would use them,” Sánchez recalls. “The mentality you have to have is a winning mentality,” he adds.
Hugo Sánchez next to the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid in April 1989. Getty Images
The mystic found some critics in Spain. One of them was Luis Aragonés, the Atlético de Madrid coach whom Sánchez joined at the age of 23. “Here they don’t feel crazy enough to have psychologists. If you have to say something about psychology, I’ll say it, I’m the psychologist,” said the coach, whom Sánchez sees as one of his great influences to train him on the bench. “He always looked you in the eye and convinced you. He left me a lot of lessons,” says Sánchez. His other references are the Serb Bora Milutinovic, the only one to have coached at five World Cups (he managed Hugo in Mexico 86), and Miguel Mejía Barón, the Mexican who is in the United States 94 was in charge where the striker only saw action in the game against Norway.”His method helped us reach the final of the 1993 Copa America, where we were invited for the first time,” he says.The ex-footballer also assures that Javier Clemente, José Antonio Camacho and Cruyff also shared some secrets for tidying up the dressing rooms and the pitch.
Last November marked 10 years since Hugo Sánchez last led a team. In the spring of 1997 he moved to Pachuca, the team he sent as a player to the second division with the last goal. Before that he managed Almería, Necaxa and Pumas (whom he twice championed). But Hugo wants to send a clear signal: “I haven’t given up football.” Last year he dropped a few more conversations with journalists that he was interested in joining the Mexican team, which he led twice, in 2000 and between 2007 and 2008 to redirect.
Hugo Sánchez when he was Pachuca coach in 2012. Clasos (Getty)
Mexico will host its third World Cup in 2026 along with the United States and Canada. The former striker believes a new opportunity is opening up. The Mexico team are in the process of adjusting after Qatar’s resounding absence. In his analyst profile, Sánchez is skeptical about the steps taken by the Mexican federation. “Right now we are in mediocrity and to rise to a higher level we have to compete with those who are above us. If we compete with each other, we won’t improve,” he says. His recipe is to get out of the comfort zone to face, as the tricolor did in 1993, the Conmebol teams, the South American Confederation, where Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, among others, play. “That could help raise the level of football,” says the man who has never feared adversity.
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