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Excellent wonderful well-illustrated biography of Isidro Langara who still today, is the only footballer in history to be top scorer in major leagues on three different continents; only Alfredo Di Stefano, Romário and Ruud van Nistelrooy have matched the feat of being top scorer in three separate countries.
When he turned 18, his goalscoring abilities were recognized by second division team Real Oviedo, a club with whom he would remain for 6 years, until the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936.
At Oviedo he was the figurehead of the celebrated Delantera Eléctrica, a forward line of lightning quick youthful talent that steam-rolled teams with high tempo highly skilled play; but for the onset of war the team would have surely improved upon the two-third places in the seasons that preceded the war.
He was the winner of the Pichichi Trophy, awarded to the top scorer in the Spanish League, in the three seasons before the war, with 27 goals in 1933–34, 26 goals in 1934–35 and 28 goals in 1935–36. Even before that he was top scorer in the Spanish second division the year Real Oviedo was promoted.
During his first spell in Oviedo, he is recognized to have scored 281 goals in 220 games, this includes 231 goals in 160 competitive games. In the season 1933–34 he scored an unprecedented 60 goals in 32 games for Oviedo and another 9 goals in 5 games for the Spanish national team, this is still the highest single season goalscoring count for any Spanish born footballer.
In December 1936, he played one match for Athletic Bilbao.[5]
With the onset of war, he joined the Republican side. In 1937 he played exhibition games around Europe with the Basque National team to raise funds for the war effort.
When Bilbao fell to the falange, the team traveled to the Americas touring Cuba, Mexico and Argentina. In 1938 they joined the Mexican Liga Mayor under the name Euzkadi, finishing second. After the civil war ended in 1939 the team dissolved and Lángara traveled to Argentina in search of a new team, as a republican he could not return to Spain without risking harsh repression.
On the advice from his teammate Ángel Zubieta, he joined San Lorenzo de Almagro. His debut in 1939 was against perennial league champions River Plate and he scored 4 goals in a 4–2 victory, after arriving in Argentina on the morning of the same day. In 1940, Langara was the joint top scorer in the Argentine Primera with 33 goals in 34 games (his record in Argentina playing for San Lorenzo – 110 goals in 121 matches). He also holds the record of scoring most goals in a match in Argentina – 7 – that still stands today.
With Langara, San Lorenzo became an Argentine top side, eventually breaking the River Plate monopoly and winning the Argentinian league title. Lángara was San Lorenzo's star player alongside René Pontoni (courted by Barcelona but remained in Argentina) and Reinaldo Martino (who would later become a star with Juventus). Although he never won the league with San Lorenzo, the team finished twice in second place and won the Copa de Confraternidad Escobar – Gerona, an official trophy organized between the second placed teams from Argentina and Uruguay. With Lángara, San Lorenzo also reached the final of the Copa Adrián C. Escobar in 1939.
With the emergence of a professional league in Mexico in 1943, Langara signed to Real Club España, where he would win his first and only national league title. In the Mexican league he was top scorer twice, in 1944 and 1946.
24 x 17 cms, softback, 144 pages.
1995
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