Marcos Senna: The Villarreal legend
“Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.” It may be silly and possibly even cliché to quote The Sandlot when talking about a star athlete, but this quote really gets to the heart of what makes the story of Marcos Senna so amazing: a desire to create a legacy. It’s hard to look up information about Villarreal’s former No.19 without coming across some use of the word “legend,” and you don’t need to look far to understand why. Marcos Antonio Senna de Silva joined Villarreal CF in 2002 and stayed with the team through its highest highs and lowest lows. He cheered when the team beat Barcelona to finish second in LaLiga in the 2007/08 season, and he kept his head held high when the team was relegated to Segunda in 2012. He has been the young newbie and the veteran captain. Even now, after he has retired from playing professionally, Marcos Senna still devotes his time and energy into promoting the Yellow Submarine by working as an International Ambassador in the department of Institutional Relations. He has even said, “I want to stay at the club for the rest of my life.”
Back when he played football professionally, Senna was known for his spot-on passes, his incredibly long shooting range (including an insane shot from the halfway line, his self-described “best goal of my life” against Real Betis), and, most importantly, his penalty kicks. Marcos Senna’s penalty/free kicks are truly majestic. Look up a Marcos Senna free kick. Forget about your favoruite teams and hometown allegiances, forget about the scores and the trophies at stake, forget about statistics and numbers and all of the math that goes into ranking players, and just watch. Watch the way the ball perfectly arcs around the defenders, as if magnets or divine intervention pulls it between the goalposts. Watch the ball brush past the keeper’s fingertips as it curves just out of reach. Watch the way Senna’s leg tenses right before he kicks the ball and the way his power launches it at the goal with a frightening speed. We don’t normally think of football as an art form, but the way Marcos Senna scores a free kick is a thing of beauty.
Of course, when you do consider scores and teams and trophies, Senna has been just as successful. He helped take Villarreal CF to the semifinals of the Europa League in 2006. That same year, despite being born in São Paulo, Brazil, Senna applied for Spanish citizenship and competed for the Spanish national team in the 2006 FIFA World Cup. He also helped bring the team to victory in the 2008 UEFA Euro along with his Villarreal teammates Santi Cazorla and Joan Capdevila, whose shirts can still be seen in the Estadio de la Cerámica. In the last years of his professional career, Senna played in the United States for the NY Cosmos and won two Soccer Bowls. In 2013, he scored the winning goal and was the MVP of the competition, and in 2015, he won the championship, a match that would be the last game of his professional career. Not many athletes win a trophy as part of their swan song, but for a legend like Senna, there was no other way for his career to end.
In an interview with the NY Cosmos right before the final game, Marcos Senna said, “I’ve always tried to do my best and leave a good impression…. So one day when I leave, they’ll have a great memory of Marcos.” We all want to live a life transcendent, a life that other people will remember and aspire to emulate. We all want to leave behind a legacy. Some of us will achieve that through having kids or becoming artists. Some of us won’t leave behind anything at all. No matter what we do, once we’re gone, none of us will ever really know what impact we’ve had. But for Senna, I think it’s pretty clear what kind of impression he has left. He helped put a team from a small town in Spain on the map. He gives hope and pride to an entire community and fans all over the world. Marcos Senna wanted to leave a good impression, and instead, he left a great one, an inspiring one. He wanted us to have a good memory of him, and instead, he became a legend. He is not just someone who will be remembered, but someone who will never die.
