Year 1994. It was a cold November night at the Santiago Bernabeu. A close friend and I had just spent a few hours in line to get a ticket for the Real Madrid-Atletico de Madrid derby, and we were already climbing the endless set of stairs until we reached the gallinero section, the highest, coldest, cheapest and therefore most adequate option for two jobless students.
"El Buitre won't start", he mentioned, not quite believing his own words. We had been talking about that topic for a while already, but it was a shock to see coach Jorge Valdano, former colleague and friend of our beloved Emilio Butragueno, bench him in such a high-stakes match.
"Yes, I can't believe that kid is going to play again", I uttered. "That kid" was Raul Gonzalez Blanco, then a skinny 17-year-old about whom we didn't know much. He'd featured for Atletico's youth teams until Rojiblanco president Jesus Gil decided that they were too expensive for the club, so then Raul migrated to Real Madrid and proceeded to break all scoring records. That said, not even two die-hard Madridistas such as my friend and I had ever seen him play live, as we were regulars of the B-team matches and Raul had made the first-team debut straight from Real Madrid C.
The pretender to Butragueño's throne had already made his debut with Real Madrid the previous week, away at Zaragoza, in a 3-2 defeat. He wasted every single chance that came his way, two of those errors showing his right foot still demanded plenty of work.
However, none of my friends had dared to say that Raul played badly in Zaragoza. He gave their defence plenty of trouble, assisted Ivan Zamorano to score Real Madrid's second and seemed to have a knack to find himself in scoring positions. In fact, it was as though every single move of his ended up in a chance to find the net.
Still, he was just 17. A half-hour off the bench would already sound like plenty for such a young kid, but a start against Atletico? Leaving Butragueno out of the squad?
You probably know what happened next. "That kid" drove Atletico's defence as crazy as he had Zaragoza's, only this time he found the net with a classy left-footed strike, assisted Zamorano again and got a penalty scored by Jose Miguel Gonzalez, "Michel", in a famous 4-2 victory.
At the end of that year, the two jobless students found their first paid employment and used all the proceedings of their first salary to buy half-season tickets to the Bernabeu. Up to then, we'd been sporadic visitors; we then became regulars just in time to watch "that kid" morph into one of the biggest legends in Real Madrid and Spanish football history.
Many will tell you that he wasn't especially good at anything in concrete. Teammate Fernando Hierro's definition ("He's not a 10 in any specific dimension, but at least an 8.5 in all that matter") became a powerful way of encapsulating one of the most repeated ideas about Raul. One begs to differ.
The first version of Raul, up to the early 2000s, was fast, purposeful and restless. Those three characteristics -- incidentally those that marked the sharpest contrast with the fading Butragueno -- made him a constant threat, probably the most relentless forward I have ever seen play. He never took one single minute off. He ran every single route. He pressed centre-backs in every single play. He chased every single ball. His energy was second to none, and coupled with his speed, he put himself into scoring situations that no other striker would have found. In today's footballing terms, he was like a faster version of Luis Suarez, always leading defenders to make mistakes.
In those years until the summer of 2002, you could count on Raul to find himself in front of the goalkeeper at least twice per match, even if neither came off the regular flow of his team's play. In those seasons, he won three La Liga titles, three Champions League crowns and two Intercontinental Cups, making a habit of scoring in finals. His goal in Paris against Valencia is especially remembered among Madridristas, in the 2000 Champions League final, dribbling and rounding former Real Madrid keeper Santiago Canizares in the process, and the clincher in the 1998 Intercontinental Cup final against Vasco da Gama.
The second version of Raul, and the one that's probably most remembered by the general public, started after the 2002 World Cup. An injury prevented him from playing in the quarterfinals against South Korea, and the player that reappeared the following season was a tad bit slower, less emotional, less intuitive but much more intelligent on the pitch.
Few players have known how to adapt to the physical changes that a professional footballer experiences better than Raul; the parallel with Ryan Giggs is obvious here. Raul's evolution from restless forward to wise second striker, now playing behind a pure No. 9 such as the Brazilian Ronaldo and taking advantage of the spaces he could find, allowed Raul to extend his career for Real Madrid for at least two extra seasons. He reinvented himself as a player, using his uncanny sense of positioning to compensate for his waning physical skills.
In that second stage of his career, he wasn't able to impact matches in the same way, but still was a formidable asset for what was a star-studded Real Madrid. He added another three La Liga titles to his curriculum but never managed to get to the top of European football again.
His experience with the national team, despite the 44 goals in 102 matches, can't be catalogued under any adjective other than bitter. In his prime, Spain were eliminated from France '98, mostly due to errors committed by Spain goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta in their opening group-stage match, a 3-2 defeat to Nigeria. Raul then missed from the penalty spot in the final minute of Spain's 2-1 quarterfinal loss to France at Euro 2000, and two years later was injured for the crucial quarterfinal against South Korea in 2002.
His performances in Portugal 2004 and Germany 2006, when he was already a very different player, could never deliver on the expectations that the name Raul and the memories of his displays in previous top-level matches evoked among Spanish fans. One still believed anything was possible with Raul on the pitch, but the stubborn reality proved us wrong until Luis Aragones decided to axe him from the national team.
Instead of finishing his career as a Madridista, and well aware of the difficulties that decision would entail, he chose to take his impeccable work ethic to Germany, Qatar and the United States before retiring. For someone who became a socio just as Raul made it to the first team, Real Madrid's No. 7 shirt will never really belong to any other player. Raul influenced the way many fans of my generation watch football, what they expect from a youth-team product, what they look for in a Real Madrid player. Raul became the reference to measure whether one specific footballer was cut out to play for the Madridistas.
On Sunday evening, Raul played his last official football match with New York Cosmos. Twenty-one years and one week after he made his debut at the Bernabeu, it feels about right for Raul to call it quits, finishing in style with a NASL title.
Those two jobless students, now full of grey hair, feel almost out of words to convey their admiration for an icon on and off the pitch. They'll simply say thank you.