Tuesday 8 September 2015 19:17, UK
Once hailed as the best Spanish player of his generation, Joaquin has made an emotional return to Real Betis. Adam Bate looks at a career that threatened to scale the heights but has now come full circle…
Real Betis coach Pepe Mel has written a novel so you might expect him to have a flair for words. However, his description of his club's latest signing will take some beating even if his next opus stretches beyond 100,000 of them. "Joaquin is Betis and Betis is Joaquin." Few on the southern side of Seville, where the club makes its home, would disagree.
It's been almost a decade since Joaquin played for Betis. Back in the days when the club had broken the world transfer record to put Brazil's Denilson on their left wing, it was the young lad on the opposite flank who was even better. There was a Copa del Rey triumph in 2005, but mostly there are memories of his cheeky smile and sheer joy at playing the game.
It wasn't just Betis fans charmed by the young Joaquin. His popularity reached a crescendo in 2002 at that summer's World Cup. Ostensibly, he was the villain, missing a penalty in the shoot-out defeat to South Korea. But having seen his cross from which Fernando Morientes scored wrongly disallowed for having crossed the line, a nation took him to its heart.
He'd been brilliant, after all. El Pais called Joaquin "the great discovery" of the World Cup. In a team that included future World Cup winners such as Iker Casillas, Carles Puyol and Xavi, it was Joaquin who was greeted with cheers at the airport as "Spain's best player" - at just 20-year-old, a symbol of hope for the next generation.
Perhaps it wasn't quite Paul Gascoigne after Italia '90, but he did have his own puppet on Spain's equivalent of Spitting Image and everyone had a Joaquin story. His fondness for jokes, no matter what the circumstances was a disarming trait and having dreamed of being a bullfighter as a child he was a natural poster boy. Crucially, he was also brilliant at football.
Jose Mourinho made numerous attempts to lure him to Chelsea. Sir Alex Ferguson had him watched for years. A move to Real Madrid as the long-term replacement for Luis Figo seemed as if it would be only a matter of time - the Andalusian Galactico. It wasn't hyperbole that led Marca to claim he'd be the heartbeat of the national team by 2004.
But a move to Valencia, becoming the club's record signing in 2006, was the wrong one at the wrong time. Joaquin endured a frosty relationship with manager Ronald Koeman - the Dutchman didn't share the player's sense of humour - and he never was able to scale the anticipated heights after leaving Betis.
Inconsistency, a hazard of the job for many a winger, particularly one so reliant on confidence, was an issue. "The word has haunted me," he once admitted. "I am a player who needs to be well both psychologically and physically. I need to have a cheerful evening to play good football."
He later "found a home" at Malaga under Manuel Pellegrini, responding to a coach whose humility he respected. Joaquin saw himself as "a right-winger but adaptable to what the coach wants" and proved it under Pellegrini - operating in various roles, notably as a second striker, as Malaga beat the odds to reach the Champions League knockout stages in 2013.
But there was always a sense that this was a fun-loving character who'd lost his way. Cruelly, his last cap came aged 26, just months before Spain embarked on their period of unprecedented success. And while he was impressive enough for Fiorentina last season, it had become a career in danger of feeling like a lament. "Betis is always on my mind," he said.
"Joaquin has given everything for Fiorentina," said his representative Eduardo Espejo, "and now he wants to return to the club of his life." Mel agreed. "This is his home. The player and the club are going to find a way. The only question is when." After a fraught summer featuring a series of uncharacteristically moody social media pics, he has finally got his wish.
That Joaquin reportedly accepted a significant pay cut is a reflection of that desire to return and the love-in at his presentation, in front of a 20,000 crowd, would've been sickly if it wasn't so obviously heartfelt. "I'm like a little boy in a [toy shop]," he said, his plaster-covered arm testament to the tantrum thrown when the move appeared to be scuppered.
"I had some beautiful moments in my first stint at Betis. But now I'm fulfilling a dream. It can be the happiest moment of my career." Asked about the forthcoming presidential elections, he added: "That doesn't matter. I'm here for the fans, the people, the land. What matters is Betis." And Betis is Joaquin. As Mel might well muse, you couldn't write it.
