Antonio Agredano

Updated Sunday, March 24, 2024-00:47

Manuel Ruiz de Lopera

has died in Seville at the age of 79. A difficult president to forget for Real Betis, whose stadium bore his name and under his mandate they played two Copa del Rey finals, one won against Osasuna in 2005, another lost in 1997 against FC Barcelona, ​​and a qualification for Liga de Champions, first and last in their history, in the 2004/05 season.

On Epiphany Eve, Manuel Ruiz de Lopera was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of the Santa Isabel clinic in Seville. The cause: severe diverticulitis, which was not the first time he had suffered, and which had to be treated immediately. This Saturday he died, according to

Cadena Ser.

With the city devoted to the parade, many Betics sent him strength and remembered when

Don Manué

played King Baltasar at Christmas 1993.

"I ask Baltasar, the other two Wise Men and the Lord of Seville, the Great Power, that Betis will be in the First Division next season". His wish was granted.

By then, Lopera was already a fundamental character in the football culture of the Andalusian capital. Without being president of Real Betis, a position he assumed in 1996, he was already the institutional reference of the green and white club.

"Reinaldo, look: I need approximately... 800 million pesetas in 25 minutes. Betis cannot die because it would be a joy for many people. And I cannot give that displeasure to the Betis fans, who for me are the largest in the world. Give me a transfer as soon as possible!", was his part of the script in a little theater recorded on video in which he was the absolute protagonist.

It was June 30, 1992.

Sports corporations were making their appearance in Spanish football

and Real Betis was in a compromised situation. Lopera recorded himself as a hero, assuming with the Farusa company the almost five million current euros that the club was missing to achieve its legal conversion. Such were their ways. Populism, beticism and legal tightrope walking.

King of the El Fontanal neighborhood, where he lived until the day of his death, Manuel Ruiz de Lopera y Ávalos (Seville, August 13, 1944) was part of that extinct line of presidents who in the nineties convulsed, not always for the better, Spanish football. The Betic, along with

Augusto César Lendoiro, José María Caneda, Joan Gaspart and Jesús Gil,

filled hours of television and radio around football news, sometimes overshadowing the performance on the pitch of their own teams.

Lopera made his fortune selling household appliances on installment plans. If the clients defaulted, he kept their property. He always lived off the income from those properties. Commercial premises, warehouses and homes. From his house on Jabugo Street he jumped to the offices of Real Betis, which was always the club of his heart. And he did it in a big way.

Fiery speeches,

unthinkable signings for the time, like that of Denilson, and an almost unhealthy paternalism with the footballers

. The city still remembers the Halloween party that Benjamín Zarandona organized in his chalet and to which the entire Betis squad went. Lopera went there at dawn, accompanied by Juande Ramos, then coach, to scold his players in the middle of a room where there was plenty of alcohol.

Despite

the judicial setbacks

and leaving Real Betis through the back door, part of the fans still have the aftertaste of a passionate, eccentric and fun president. From the jar of peaches in syrup in which a Betic man carried the ashes of his father to the stadium from Joaquín's exile in Albacete or that "we were in the UVI" that crossed borders.

Lopera was part of a less professionalized and controlled football than today. With too much room for excess, for dealing and for folklore. The thirteen bars club remembers a unique president, who built as much as he destroyed, but who always felt the colors in a wild and noisy way. Jesús del Gran Poder, Real Betis Balompié and the farewell to a man that many wanted to imitate, but whom few caught the tone.