Michael Robinson won us over by speaking better Spanish than you. He was previously a European champion.

Real Madrid presented an English footballer and in his first speech there was a pleasant surprise: he spoke in more than correct and fluent Spanish .

Trent Alexander-Arnold has arrived in Spain from Liverpool with a European Cup under his belt. His command of Spanish was surprising because it's been five years since we've heard one with such a clear British undertone : the date of Michael Robinson 's death. A time in which he has been missed, so it's worth remembering his figure, both on television sets and on the pitch.

Robinson was much more than the man who snuck into the homes of Spaniards for three decades to tell the story of football. "El Inglés ," as his teammates called him, arrived in Spain in January 1987 to play for Osasuna . He did so after having been crowned European champion three years earlier with Liverpool and with a clear lack of knowledge of Spanish geography. No matter how hard he looked for Osasuna on a map, there was no way to find the city.

His arrival in Pamplona was preceded by recurring knee injuries . However, that didn't stop him from becoming a star . At that point in his career, he had a personal motto: Good, better, best .

A dedicated player

Javier Castañeda was Osasuna's captain when they signed Robinson. He talks about Michael's arrival in El Confidencial: "I heard he was coming from Liverpool, but I didn't know him. My first reaction was to think he was injured, because it was impossible for him to join Osasuna given the money . The signing surprised me, but he fit in well with the team and vice versa. He wasn't a difficult player to deal with."

"We needed a striker , and he became an important player for us . We had reports on him and watched some of his matches. The signing was a success because he was a classic leader who led by example . Michael had a way of being and playing that was contagious. He wasn't a player with refined technique, but rather one of total dedication," summarizes Pedro Mari Zabalza, the coach of that Osasuna team, in an interview with this newspaper.

Robinson never felt like Diego Armando Maradona or Leo Messi on the pitch, a space where he considered himself a tidy and combative player, despite the vicissitudes he suffered with his knees, but no one smiled like him. " Michael won a European Cup, but doing so on penalties left him with that thorn . Even in that, he couldn't fight his sense of perfection. He was very demanding of himself, as well as a good header and a cunning striker in the box," maintains Jesús Ruiz Mantilla, his biographer.

He always displayed boundless curiosity, whether it was to immerse himself in the culture or for other matters. "We had a very good relationship. I remember when he arrived, he asked me who was in charge of the locker room, and I told him that, if he wanted, he could be the one . He replied, frightened, "No. 'Don't worry, Michael, you'll figure it out,'" I suggested. "The Englishman wasn't just another player."

The zenith of Spanish football came with tiki-taka and the invariable commitment to possession . But before that, when we were the best and never won, fury was the hallmark. Robinson came from the Premier League, where they trained a lot with the ball, while training in Spain was very physical. "Is this a football team or an athletics team?" Michael asked during his first preseason .

His relationship with Spain was love at first sight, almost like Ernest Hemingway's. His fighting spirit and dedication on the pitch fit perfectly with Osasuna's ethos , to the point where he became one of the team's leaders and made his mark. To achieve this, he strictly followed one of his father's teachings: "If you are noble, they will recognize you for it."

El Sadar always showed his appreciation, but he said goodbye to football when knee problems made his presence on the pitch unsustainable. Robinson, true to his principles, gave up his remaining salary and returned to the United Kingdom for a few months . But Spain had already pierced his heart, and he returned.

"His love for Spain is the same as any English person's , even more so if they're from the north. He loved the charm of the people, the warmth, the sense of community, the wine, the food... The country never ceased to surprise him. Nothing is more different from the United Kingdom than Spain. That difference was what attracted him ," argues Ruiz Mantilla.

Castañeda says: "He loved the open-mindedness of the Spanish people. He adapted very easily because he liked the people, the food, the atmosphere... he liked them. He started learning the language from swear words, which he didn't even know what they meant. When he learned it, Sammy Lee [the other foreigner from Osasuna] said he didn't understand him in English, that he didn't know what English he spoke ."

Robinson contradicted the hackneyed stereotype that footballers are uncultured. To support that view, you'd have to know them all, as Winston Churchill said before discussing the French . In fact, Michael was always a voracious newspaper reader and a man interested in culture. His fondness for El País and The Guardian stayed with him until his death.

These tastes linked his future to television . Although his image has always been linked to Canal Plus , his beginnings in Spanish television were at TVE as a commentator for the 1990 World Cup .

Paco Grande , a renowned TVE reporter, had established a relationship with Robinson after interviewing him on several occasions and proposed to José Ángel de la Casa that he be hired to commentate on matches . The proposal was made to Julio Bernárdez, then head of sports at the public network.

We spoke with Bernárdez about that signing.

QUESTION: How did your incorporation come about?

ANSWER. We were looking for specialists from the teams playing in the 1990 World Cup in Italy . Paco Grande suggested him and teamed him up with Luis Fernández. It was a great duo marked by a sad story: both died after contracting the same cancer.

Q. How about short distances?

A. I liked his profile because he was a really funny guy. He told anecdotes about his early days when he didn't know Spanish and how he learned it in Pamplona. He was a fantastic gentleman and person.

P. It was an easy signing then.

A. Yes. In those early conversations, we didn't just talk about football. If I hadn't talked to him about other things, I probably wouldn't have signed him. It was the opposite of what happened to me with Javier Clemente.

Q. What?

A. He was supposed to be one of the commentators, but he came into my office saying, "You're going to hire me, and at whatever price I want." When I saw that, I explained to him I wasn't going to be commentating on the World Cup. Robinson, on the other hand, was a great guy and a fabulous man. The difference was huge.

P. Your time at TVE , however, was short.

A. Television is always a back and forth. Canal Plus acquired the rights to the League and signed him with a huge checkbook. These were levels of spending that public television cannot and should not afford.

His great Castilian

His new career in television didn't come as a surprise to his former teammates. "He was a showman , and we expected that kind of television. He had something about him, because not everyone plays for Liverpool and then has that ease of adapting to a world that wasn't their own . On TV, he brought the same winning gene as on the pitch," Castañeda notes.

Zabalza maintains that Robinson "succeeded in television like he did in football" and that "he was good at everything." His beginnings in television led him to try to perfect his language skills, but Alfredo Relaño, head of sports at Canal Plus , told him to forget about that. Michael was actually captivating because of his way of expressing himself in Spanish with that authentic British accent.

"He spoke Spanish better than anyone. People noticed his accent, but his vast vocabulary and spectacular range of attention were worth highlighting . Although he considered himself British, he was a pure Spaniard," explains Ruiz Mantilla.

That way of speaking led him to have his own program, Informe Robinson [which still runs on Movistar], in addition to revolutionizing television with El Día Después . Ruiz Mantilla says: "Michael was a crusader against the commonplace, and sports is such a terrain. He became an original man who broke parameters with grace . With his programs, he achieved a spectacular sociological x-ray."

His time on television made him a revolutionary, even if he underestimated himself. That period is well known. But his years as a footballer, however, seemed forgotten. And for good reason: he was a true European champion, even if he tried to hide it. You can't take the spots off a leopard . Nor should we forget that Michael Robinson was much more than a television personality; he was a mischievous striker based on his inseparable motto: good, better, best .