Hold me closer, Fran Sandaza
There are several places that a look at the Brighton & Hove Albion career of Fran Sandaza could begin. He was after all a fantastic character, even though he only made four starts in his one season with the Seagulls.
How about the last minute winner against Oldham Athletic on his home debut in September 2010? It sent the Albion to the top of League One, a position Gus Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named’s side did not relinquish over the next eight months as they sauntered to the title.
Or the way he celebrated scoring the last goal in the final seconds of a routine rout of Portsmouth in the FA Cup by ripping off his shirt and going insane, as if it were the winner in the World Cup Final?
Sandaza’s regular complaints to the media about a lack of game time were always amusing, too. Fair play to him for publicly pondering why he was not getting more than 10 or 15 minutes when his competition up front was Glenn Murray, Ashley Barnes and Chris Wood, all of whom would be regular scorers in the Premier League within the next decade.
Instead though, we are going to start with two wonderful interactions WAB had with the enigmatic Sandaza both during and after his time at Withdean that show what a card he was. A personal touch to the story of an Albion cult hero, if you will.
The first came when we bumped into Charlie Oatway on West Street after the 4-3 win over Dagenham & Redbridge that secured promotion to the Championship and Oatway snuck us into the players’ private party which was in full swing in Vodka Revolution.
One Brighton fan who was slightly past his best was collecting photos of himself and every player at the party posing with a shirt that had ‘Promoted’ printed on the back.
Unfortunately, the free bar supplied by Tony Bloom took its toll and said supporter kept forgetting he had already collected a photo with Sandaza. Either that, or he was simply a massive fan of the Spaniard.
On what must have been the third or fourth occasion that the supporter approached Sandaza, the striker decided he’d had enough of this. Sandaza took the shirt and launched it across the room, past Adam El-Abd pouring a four litre bottle of vodka straight into people’s mouths and Gary Dicker lying on his back like an upside down turtle on a sofa.
It landed in a heap in the corner. Sandaza gesticulated wildly at the supporter and then wandered off. There were plenty of surreal sights in Vodka Revs that night, but Sandaza’s bewilderment with the promotion shirt was arguably the best of the lot.
Interaction number two came over five years later, when we randomly tweeted the lyrics to the NSK’s song about Sandaza. To the tune of Sloop John B by The Beach Boys, it went: “Fran Sandaza, he looks like a horse.”
An hour or so later, WAB gets a Twitter DM from Sandaza. It simply said in capital letters: “PIECE OF SHIT”. What made this even better was that Sandaza did not follow WAB, so chances are the only way that he could have seen the tweet is by searching for his own name or if he has an alert set up for whenever anyone mentions him.
If it is the latter, then he might even be reading this. Hi Fran, if you are. And can we just say that we loved your work as part of Poyet’s You Know Who’s 2010-11 League One champions.
For although his playing time was brief, Fran Sandaza played an underrated role in the success Brighton enjoyed that season. He arrived on a free transfer from Dundee United, whom he scored 11 goals for in 43 appearances over the course of the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons.
Five of those came against the Old Firm, suggesting that the better the opponents and the bigger the occasion, the more Sandaza delivered.
Terrors fans loved him and he earned the nickname Braveheart during his two years at Tannadice Park, although the second of those was injury hit as he failed to complete 90 minutes in 2009-10 due to hernia problems.
Fran Sandaza arrived at Brighton still injured. Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named had high hopes for him, saying when Sandaza’s capture was announced: “Fran is going to bring what we missed – putting the ball in the net, simple as that, and that is why he is here.”
“He is going to have a great chance to start playing in 10 days time in our next game against MK Dons and if he can put the ball in the net he is going to be playing in every game.”
The MK Dons game – when Kazenga LuaLua scored a free kick that was so powerful it nearly took the goal to Eastbourne – came too early for Fran Sandaza to make his Brighton debut.
Injures would be a constant theme to his year at Brighton and Albion fans instead had to wait the best part of a month to see their new striker in action, his first appearance arriving as a 69th minute replacement for Murray in a 2-0 win at Plymouth Argyle.
Four days later and Sandaza announced himself to the Withdean crowd in some style with that goal against Oldham. He relieved Murray with around 20 minutes to play again when Brighton and the Latics were locked at 1-1.
It looked like it would finish that way until the 96th minute. Inigo Calderon headed hopefully into the Oldham box with seconds remaining and in the ensuring chaos, Sandaza reacted to fire past Dean Brill and make it Brighton 2-1 Oldham.
If there were a roof on Withdean, it would have come off. Sandaza tore his shirt off and the Theatre of Trees exploded with the sort of brilliant, last minute, going mad on the running track scenes that is enough to make us miss the place.
With that goal, Sandaza assured his cult hero status and he had only been an Albion player for 41 minutes. To celebrate the Albion’s lofty new position at the top of the table, patrons in pubs across Brighton that evening were belting out Hold me closer, Fran Sandaza as Elton John should have sung, rather than Tiny Dancer
Another injury in early October ruled Sandaza out for much of the next two months. During this lengthy absence, Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named moved to bring in Wood on loan from West Brom, pushing Sandaza into fourth place in the striker pecking order.
Wood scored on his Brighton debut and despite only being a teenager, it was fairly obvious that he was a talented young player who could challenge Murray and Barnes. Who knows how different Sandaza’s Albion career might have panned out without that injury?
Sandaza’s chances were always going to be limited from the point Wood arrived, although in fairness he did his best to seize the rare opportunities that came his way.
His first start for the Albion came at Gigg Lane in early December when the Albion faced FC United of Manchester in an FA Cup second round replay. Sandaza scored the opening goal in a comfortable 4-0 win over the Evo-Stik League Premier Division outfit.
Sandaza seemed to like the FA Cup. He next struck when Pompey came to Withdean in the third round, sparking the infamous ‘He thinks he has won the World Cup!’ celebration.
Dave Kitson managed to get himself sent off after an impressive 14 minutes. Brighton proved no match for their visitors after that, despite Pompey being one division higher than the Albion in the Championship at the time and having reached the final of the competition the previous season.
Wood and Barnes had the Albion 2-0 ahead and on easy street against the 10 men going into half time. Sandaza replaced Wood in the 68th minute and although Tom Kilbey pulled one back two minutes from the 90, there never seemed any danger of Pompey mounting a dramatic comeback.
Just to be on the safe side, Sandaza finished at the second attempt 36 seconds into time added on after being teed up Barnes. He then proceeded to go completely berserk, sprinting onto the running track in front of the South Stand, taking his shirt off and holding it in the air whilst pointing at his name printed on the back and bellowing.
The form of Murray, Barnes and Wood meant that chances became even more limited after that for Sandaza. He scored once more for the Albion, another injury time goal as a substitute after twisting and turning to make some space in the box as Plymouth were hammered 4-0 at Withdean.
Following his goal against the Pilgrims, Fran Sandaza talked about wanting to earn an extension to his one year contract at Brighton. When Barnes was ruled out through injury at the same time as Wood was on international duty with New Zealand at the end of March, Sandaza suddenly had two starts to put his claims to Poyet.
The Albion beat Swindon Town and Dagenham & Redbridge in those two to make it eight wins from eight in Mad March, but unfortunately Sandaza was unable to make much of an impression and he was released at the end of the season after two further substitute appearances (and throwing a fan’s shirt across a packed bar).
Sandaza being Sandaza, he left Brighton in a blaze of entertaining glory, claiming Poyet You Know Who betrayed him with a lack of game time.
Speaking to The Argus, the striker said: “I had several good offers when I came to Brighton. I chose this club because the gaffer was talking with me on the phone for an hour-and-a-half trying to convince me.”
“After that everything has gone bad for me. I have had just three starts and I think I didn’t deserve that. Just 570 minutes during the whole season and I’ve scored five goals. Is that bad?”
“I’m so grateful to the city, to the club, to the team-mates and also to the supporters but personally the situation for me has been really unfair. I now hope to get a good club anywhere. Thanks to everyone that has supported me and congratulations to everybody.”
Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named reacted to those comments in typical Gus You Know Who style: “I think if we had finished anywhere from second to 24th he had got a point about not playing. But when you win the league, it doesn’t get better with him playing.”
That good club anywhere that Fran Sandaza eluded to after leaving Brighton ended up being St Johnstone. Back in the SPL, he scored 17 times from 34 appearances in all competitions but found himself leaving come the end of the 2011-12 season.
2012-13 took him the newly reformed Rangers, about to embark on a campaign in the fourth tier of Scottish football after being administratively relegated due to their financial meltdown.
Having averaged a goal every game in the top flight the previous year, Sandaza arrived at Ibrox as the man expected to fire Rangers back through the leagues, seeing as he had dropped three divisions and everything.
Instead, Sandaza ended up scoring just twice in 17 matches before having his contract torn up following an incident which makes throwing a fan’s shirt across the bar or DMing a Twitter account with the message “PIECE OF SHIT” seem completely normal.
In March 2013, Sandaza was duped into thinking a Celtic-supporting taxi driver who had phoned him up was actually a football agent. Sandaza told the taxi driver that he was only at Rangers for the money, had no interesting in playing in the lowest division of Scottish football and would leave if an alternative offer was made.
No need to wait for the offer as Rangers got rid two weeks after the call was made public. Sandaza has since gone onto travel the world, turning out for clubs in Qatar, Japan, China and India as well as returning to his native Spain.
It was back in his home country where Sandaza managed arguably the biggest achievement of his career, helping Girona into La Liga for the first time in their history.
Sandaza has enjoyed two spells with the Gironistes, earning legend status along the way. In his first spell, Girona could have clinched promotion from the second tier on the final day of the 2014-15 season with victory over Lugo.
A stoppage time goal however meant that they had to settle for a draw and dropped into the play offs. Sandaza gave a fantastic interview afterwards in which he accused Lugo – who he had played for the previous season – of trying too hard when they did not need the point.
The play offs then turned out to be a complete disaster for Girona. After beating Real Zaragoza 3-0 away from home in the first leg, Girona rested key players including Sandaza for the return at Estadi Montilivi and lost 4-1 to crash out on away goals.
His second spell at Girona came following a year with FC Tokyo and ended with that cherished promotion to the top flight at the end of the 2016-17 season.
No need for any emotional post match interviews this time, hopefully no need to call anyone a “PIECE OF SHIT” and hopefully no need to launch a celebrating supporter’s promotion shirt into a dark corner of a bar.
Fran Sandaza, what a character.
