• 61 years old: Michael Robinson dies, one of the most popular faces in Spanish football
  • Robinson, his most famous phrases

The boy who had heard him narrating games so many times, that at the 1990 World Cup in Italy he had laughed when he questioned whether or not a referee was Japanese because he didn't have a camera, was going to fulfill a dream by working with him in his most beloved ' The day after'. He was nervous, because he was not yet aware of 'El Inglés' (as veterans called him) ability to make people around him feel good. Still today I could pinpoint the chair I was sitting in in the former newsroom of the Plus at Torre Picasso when Michael arrived so, to my surprise upon hearing that he was calling me by name (I knew how to win you over to his cause), start with a waterfall of anecdotes that has never stopped.

Michael was a big boss, in the best sense. He made a group; your best, meetings, best off the newsroom. How many "Colonel! Can you give me another one?", How many meals in Castellana, De María, canes at the bar at the entrance of his other house, SER. One of its virtues was knowing how to form a team, one that we used to learn from, and which was later perpetuated in the 'Robinson Report'. Before starting with the new format, Michael showed the certainty that we would know how to adapt because, after all, we already knew how to tell stories.

The ability to count, on screen and off. That was Michael. You could hear the same anecdote 50 times: each time it seemed new. I remember an irreproducible due to eschatology of a visit to the doctor the same morning that we had a recording with two soccer players. Michael told it when he saw me, continued when team members joined, and continued when each of the players and his entourage arrived. On all occasions the ever-growing group ended up bent.

Respect for the viewer

Irreverent by condition, Michael asked for respect. For the viewer. "Pictures, images", he got tired of repeating. "We are invading people's houses through a window. Let's give them quality." His lucid views on programs and formats, on the value of the image and the need for silence on TV, made one wonder if he really had reached the middle of his thirties and with great luck, as he recognized.

Because he always felt lucky, he allowed himself nothing but to squirt every moment. He was fortunate to be friends with his former idol, Severiano Ballesteros . It is inevitable to remember those days of 2009 in Pedreña, excited to find his "trunk", trying to overcome an illness that he would know later, and the laughter when remembering when a policeman had stopped them both years before in the luxurious Ferrari of Seve , who was smoking with the handbrake on. A good chess player, the narration of a game prevented him, on the other hand, from being able to travel to interview other athletes he admired, Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov . The conversation about the need for the public to know through our report that this had been a ruthless fight between two geniuses lasted well into the early hours of the morning: that titanic endurance capacity was another of the brands of the house.

Her newborn granddaughter

We had filming the day after the doctors explained his illness to him. I will not forget her emotion when she released it, and how she expressed the desire to enjoy her newborn granddaughter more and to try to live as always until the end. He felt very good during almost all these months, in which it was common to hear him tell: "There is someone with cancer out there who does not know they have it because they have exchanged the roles of the diagnoses, I am screwed." Because humor, as British as Spanish, has been the main feature. "Michael, how big is this, how many work here?" Asked a visit to Movistar not long ago. "Half", he released 'El Guiri'.

"See if the treatment I think Atleti won at Anfield is affecting me," read one of his last messages. Humor and class. I will always appreciate my father's satisfied face when, one day when we met, he told him that he had to be proud of his son. I will always regret not having been able to give him one last gift, this from a follower of his in Cuba, which I keep at home and one day will rest in the newsroom. A newsroom that will now seem huge and mute, alert to listen again to another of the English stories, that of the imposing figure and the childish smile, and the echo of the laughter that followed them.

Raúl Román

Editor of 'Robinson Report', worked 20 years with Michael

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