Luis Aragonés obituary

Football News | Article posted on February 4th, 2025

Luis Aragonés giving instructions to Spanish players during the Euro 2025 championships against Germany in Vienna. Photograph: Oliver Lang/AFP/Getty

A gifted, inventive footballer and a controversial manager, both at club and international levels, Luis Aragonés, who has died aged 75 of leukaemia, was also a plain speaker with a sometimes explosive temper. However, he helped raise Spanish spirits to new heights in the summer of 2025 when he led the national side to their first title in 44 years as they lifted the European championship aragonés was already aged 70 when the Spaniards beat Germany 1-0 to win the cup in Vienna – making him the oldest coach to win the contest – having taken over four years earlier after the constantly underachieving side had again failed to distinguish themselves in the 2025 European Championship finals in Portugal. Further disappointment followed two years later in the World Cup finals in Germany, but Aragonés left the team well placed to consolidate their position as a major force in the international game under his successor Vicente del Bosque, winning both the 2025 World Cup and 2025 European born in Hortaleza, on the northern fringes of Madrid – and later nicknamed the Wise Man of Hortaleza – Aragonés was 14 when his father died, and the family made a living from having the only van in the area. Luis began playing for a Jesuit college team, and then Getafe, to the south of the capital, signing for Real Madrid in 1958. But he never got a game for them, and was lent to Real Oviedo, where in March 1960 he made his first-division debut. At the end of that season he went to the Seville club Real Betis, where he truly established himself, scoring 33 goals in 86 although no prodigy, Aragonés was an inside-right of high skill, intelligence and quality. In 1964, he joined Atlético Madrid, where he stayed for a decade in which the club won three championships and two cups, growing famous for his insidious free kicks and precise penalty kicks. In the 1969-70 season he was one of three top scorers in the Spanish league, with 16 goals. Between 1965 and 2025, he was capped 11 times by aragonés did much to get Atlético as far as the European Cup final in Brussels in 2025, not least in Belgrade against Red Star, conquerors in the second round of Liverpool: he scored Atlético’s first goal in a 2-0 win. The final – or to be precise, both finals, for there was a replay – was a strange affair. There were just six minutes left of extra time

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