Gracias, Bruno – a tribute to Brighton’s El Capitan

Cast your minds back to the summer of 2012. London was gearing up to host the Olympics, Maroon 5 were sitting at the top of the charts with Payphone and Brighton and Hove Albion had just completed their first season at the Amex.

Gus Poyet had led the Albion to an 11th place in their first season back Championship in five years, the club’s highest second tier finish since 1991. With another 8,000 seats being installed in our new home to cater for demand, there was one obvious aim for the 2012-13 season – a push for the Premier League.

What was needed for that to happen was reinforcements. Poyet had, by and large, been loyal to the squad that won the League One title up until that point. They were good enough to take us to mid table in the Championship. To make the step to promotion challengers, upgrades were needed.

The three positions most glaringly requiring new signings were goalkeeper, left back and right back. Casper Ankergren may have been great for the coffee shops and tobacconists of Hove and Sexy Pete Brezovan easy on the eye, but neither was a particularly competent goalkeeper. In came Champions League winner Tomasz Kuszczak from Manchester United.

At left back, Marcos Painter could made a tortoise look like Usain Bolt and Poyet clearly didn’t fancy turning Joe Mattock’s temporary switch from West Bromwich Albion into a permanent deal, probably after that time he had to miss a game because he cut his bollocks shaving. And so in came 36-cap England left back Wayne Bridge on loan from Manchester City with the Albion paying a fraction of £90,000 a week wages. Good business if you can get it.

At right back, Inigo Calderon was a solid Championship performer and we’d taken Gonzalo Jara on loan twice from the Hawthorns. Jara might well have been the answer had he not missed a game after being arrested for driving while banned. Or been sent home from the Chile squad for missing a curfew. Or got sent off for a horror tackle on Blackpool’s Keith Southern.

So instead of signing a madcap Chilean, Poyet brought in this little known right back called Bruno Saltor on a free transfer from Valencia. Only the most hardened followers of Spanish football could claim to be aware of who Bruno was. Most Brighton supporters first impression of him was when Google threw up that now-famous picture of Bruno putting in a crunching tackle on Cristiano Ronaldo.

Google also told us that he’d played only 17 times for Los Murciélagos in the 2011-12 season under future Arsenal boss Unai Emery, who he’d also worked under at Almeria. Before that, he’d played for Espanyol reserves and on loan at Gimnastic de Tarragona and UE Lleida – hardly a glittering career.

Indeed – and it seems mental now to be saying this giving everything Bruno has achieved as a Brighton player – at the time he signed, many Seagulls supporters suspected that he’d had been brought in just to keep Vicente happy. Poyet and the Albion had taken up the option of extending Vicente’s contract by a further year – against his will – thanks to his appearance numbers triggering a new deal, leading to a lot of ill-feeling from player to club.

The theory went that with one of his mates coming over from Valencia, Vicente would calm down and continue to deliver the one-man shows that had thrilled the Amex crowd sporadically in the second half of the previous season. How wrong we were.

Bruno’s early performances showed that he was so much more than ‘Vicente’s mate’. He wowed the crowd by bombing forward on a regular basis from right back whilst also shoring up the Albion’s defence as he and that new look back five with Bridge and Kuszczak helped Poyet’s side to the top of the Championship by the end of September.

Bruno scored his first goal for the club with a crunching volley from 30 yards in a 1-1 home draw with Bolton Wanderers towards the end of November. He tore away from Liam Bridcutt in celebration, jumping what looked to the naked eye to be about 30 feet up in the air, powered by sheer joy. This was a man celebrating as if he were born-and-bred Brightonian scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup Final for the club he’s supported his entire life; not a bloke from a small town in Catalonia who’d only been in the country for three months.

Before long, Bruno had been bestowed Vicente’s old song. “Ole, ole ole ole, Vicenteeee, Vicenteeee” became “Ole, ole ole ole, Brunooooo, Brunoooo.” It was the passing of the torch of popularity from one talented Spanish player who had lit up Brighton to another who was going to do so for many years to come.

Not that it was always easy for Bruno. He made 31 appearances in that first season but missed both legs of the playoff semi final with Crystal Palace through injury. Given that he would have been marking Wilfried Zaha at the Amex on the night that Zaha scored both goals to send Palace to Wembley, who knows how differently that season may have ended with Bruno on the pitch.

He played 34 times under Oscar Garcia the following year – including an ill-fated couple of months as a central midfielder – and 37 times in that awful 2014-15 season. Come that summer – and this again seems mental now – there were plenty of supporters wondering whether it was time for Bruno to be released. He was about to turn 35 and Calderon had just won Player of the Season – could Bruno really give us any more?

The answer was a resounding yes. Chris Hughton gave him a new contract, Bruno started growing a hispter beard which was very Brighton and he played every single league game of the 2015-16 campaign as the Albion went from relegation candidates to promotion challengers. He was outstanding, being a clear and obvious winner of Player of the Season, not just for his performances but for his leadership qualities as well. It was the season he became Mr Brighton – and he inherited the club captaincy from Gordon Greer at the end of it.

Unfortunately, it ended in tears with a third play off semi final defeat in four years, this time to Sheffield Wednesday. For some clubs, coming so close to promotion can leave a hangover which lingers into the next season. But not for the Albion and not for Bruno. Not even the fact he started the 2016-17 season at centre back because of injuries to Connor Goldson and Uwe Hunemeier could stop him becoming only the second ever captain after Brian Horton to lead Brighton to promotion to the top flight.

Bruno missed just four games in that final season in the Championship, meaning he’d played in 88 out of the club’s 92 league games since turning 35. Given that is an age at which most players start to wind down their careers, it’s testament to his professionalism, his athleticism and the way he goes about his work that his best form came in those twilight years.

It’s not really a surprise though. His attitude has always been exemplary and that his fuelled his popularity. Bruno will always stop and chat to fans, he puts a lot of time into supporting Albion in the Community and he just comes across as a top class guy. He’s a man who has taken Brighton to his heart and as a result, he is in all of ours.

Two seasons of Premier League football have followed in which he has played 38 league games. Despite coming up against some of the best players in the world, some of whom are nearly half his age, there hasn’t been one game in the top flight in which he’s ever looked out of his depth or past it. Whilst the Albion’s other full backs have all had nightmare games – Ezeuqiel Schelotto’s Brighton career was pretty much ended at Selhurst Park, he was that bad – Bruno always does what Bruno does. He gets on with it and he never puts a foot wrong.

It’s telling that when the Albion have been on their two worst runs in the Premier League, it’s Bruno who has always come in to steady the ship. Last season he was recalled after that Palace disaster made it no win in five; with Bruno back we drew with Tottenham Hotspur and Burnley and beat Manchester United to secure survival.

This year, his return to the side has seen much improved performances away at Spurs and in picking up a first point away at one the big six with that draw at Arsenal. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette might have the talent to devestate most defences in world football, but did not one with Bruno in.

There’s been nothing to suggest this season that he couldn’t go on for another year, but it says much about the man that he is choosing to bow out now at the top of his game. He’ll retire against the probable champions of England, and you know that Raheem Sterling, Leroy Sane, Sergio Aguero, Gabriel Jesus and the rest of Manchester City’s multi million pound star will come off the pitch knowing they’ve been in a battle with that 38-year-old free transfer from Valencia. The greatest free transfer in Brighton history.

Adios Bruno and muchas gracias. An Albion legend, now and forever.