Juan Escudero passes away

Former Atlético player Juan Escudero died on Tuesday at the age of 91, as reported by MARCA. With his passing the club lost its last living link to one of the founding chapters of its honours board.

Escudero was the last surviving member of Atlético Aviación de Madrid, the name the club carried from 1939 through 1947 after its merger with the air force side in the aftermath of the Civil War. Under that name the Rojiblancos won back-to-back La Liga titles in 1939/40 and 1940/41, the first two occasions on which the club finished at the very top of the Spanish league. Those two championships opened the sequence of league titles recorded in the club’s list of honours, and the Aviación years remain one of the most distinctive periods in Atlético’s history.

Born on 25 September 1920 in Salamanca, Escudero was part of those pioneering squads before leaving the club during the 1943/44 season. The teams he played in were assembled in difficult circumstances, with Spanish football rebuilding itself after three years of war, which makes the back-to-back titles all the more remarkable in hindsight. Players of that generation rarely enjoyed the fame of later eras, but within the club their standing is secure alongside the names celebrated among Atlético’s legends.

Atlético marked his death with an official statement on the club website: “We at Atlético Madrid also feel the pain of [Escudero’s] family, to whom we express our most heartfelt condolences. Rest in peace.”

For younger supporters, Escudero’s death was a reminder of how far back the club’s story reaches. The champions of 1940 and 1941 predate the Vicente Calderón, predate the club’s European finals, and predate almost everything the modern matchday supporter takes for granted. That a member of those sides lived into 2012, long enough to see the club win league titles, cups and European trophies under many different names and in several different homes, gave his passing a particular poignancy at the start of the new year.

Contemporary reports on the club’s departed figures and other notices from the period are preserved in the archive.