The tackle that named the Butcher of Bilbao

The game was already won. Barcelona led Athletic Bilbao 3–0 at the Camp Nou, and the only thing left to decide was how much further Diego Maradona would take it. Then Andoni Goikoetxea came through the back of him.

Maradona went down screaming. His ankle was broken. He said later that the sound was like wood breaking.

It was not a moment that came out of nowhere. Two seasons earlier Goikoetxea had put his studs into Bernd Schuster's knee in the same fixture and ruptured the German's cruciate ligament. Schuster missed nine months. By September 1983 Athletic were the champions of Spain, and Goikoetxea was the defender opponents talked about.

Barcelona's coach, César Luis Menotti, was not interested in nuance. He said Goikoetxea belonged to a "race of anti-footballers" and called for him to be banned for life. The Spanish federation gave him ten matches. An English journalist in Spain, Edward Owen, gave him something that lasted considerably longer: he called him the Butcher of Bilbao.

The name stuck partly because of a story that followed Goikoetxea for decades: that he kept the boot he wore that day at home in a glass case. He has always maintained that he never set out to hurt anyone.

A club that never got the full Maradona

The ankle is often told as the reason Barcelona never got the Maradona they paid for. That is too simple. The injury cost him a long spell of rehabilitation and could have ended his career, but the rivalry with Athletic did not end at the Camp Nou.

Athletic kept winning. They retained the league title in 1983–84 and added the Copa del Rey to make it a double. The cup final, in May 1984, was against Barcelona. Athletic won 1–0, and at the final whistle the match dissolved into a mass brawl, with King Juan Carlos in the stadium. Maradona was in the middle of it, lashing out at Athletic players. Goikoetxea was in it too, with a flying kick.

That brawl, more than the tackle eight months earlier, ended Maradona's time in Spain. He left for Napoli that summer.

What it decided

It is tempting to draw a straight line from Goikoetxea's challenge to everything Maradona did in Naples, as if Barcelona's loss was made by one man's boot. The truth is messier and more interesting. Barcelona never saw Maradona fit and settled for long enough to know what they had. Athletic beat them to the league and then beat them to the cup.

Goikoetxea left Athletic in 1987 and spent three years at Atlético Madrid before retiring. He had been part of a side that won the league twice in a row and a double. None of that is what he is remembered for.