The influence of Jorge Robledo in English football, especially at Newcastle United, it is undeniable. At halftime of the 2021/2022 FA Cup final that proclaimed Liverpool champion, the English Federation decided to honor the fifteen most important players in the history of the competition, including the iconic former Chilean soccer player.
And as. In addition to the extraordinary goalscoring record in the Football League First Division (current Premier League), the emblem of the ‘magpies’ made history by lifting the trophy twice (50/51 and 51/52) and becoming the first Latin American to score a goal in the final of the competition. The recognition was received by his daughter, Elizabeth.
“Today I would have been as famous as Alexis Sánchez”emphasized Elizabeth in conversation with the BBC.
Together with his mother and his brother Ted, Jorge arrived in England at an early age, where he excelled in his teens as a junior tennis player in Yorkshire -while Ted did so as junior swimming champion-, before starting his successful career as a player.
In their mid-40s, the Robledo brothers began their football training at Barnsley, where they showed their first weapons before joining Newcastle, winning the fifth and sixth FA Cup for the club. A resounding success for those from Saint James’ Park and with the historic goalscorer as the protagonist by converting the only goal of the victory against Arsenal in 1952.
John Lennon and his deep devotion to Jorge Robledo
Surely the fans of The Beatles they have the image of the transcendental goal more impregnated in their minds than soccer fans. The reason? The cover of John Lennon’s solo album, ‘Walls and Bridges’ (1974).
The late singer and idol of the masses immortalized the photograph of George’s note, as he was known in the United Kingdom, in a drawing he made at the age of 11 with a particular signature: “John Lennon, June 1952, Age 11”.
Decades later, the Briton would use the image on a cover to make his memory of the Chilean striker last.
In the times of Pedro Pascal, Alexis Sánchez and even Ben Brereton, the most surprising thing about this story is how Chileans did not give importance (or did not find out) to the incredible tribute that one of the most influential musicians in history paid to him. a compatriot. A feeling that only arrived in 2010, thanks to the national writer Nestor Flores.
While he was working on one of his works, Flores came across the photograph of Robledo’s goal against the ‘Gunners’, which remained in his head for the rest of the day until he could understand the reason.
“That night I went to bed around 1 in the morning, thinking that I had already seen that photo elsewhere. At around 4 I wake up and say: ‘It’s the same as the one on the cover of Lennon’s Walls and Bridges’. I get up, grab the record and compare them. They were exactly the same, except for small differences because, of course, an 11-year-old boy, as he was at the time, could not identically graph the photo. I remained silent, meditating, and began to search the Internet if anyone had noticed this. And no one had“, the novelist told the renowned British media.
A record of 111 goals in his time at Barnsley and Newcastle, two-time FA Cup champion, World Cup player in Brazil in 1950 and pure legend in the ‘magpies’, is the monumental balance of Jorge Robledo in his time in English football before his arrival at Colo Colo in 1953 .
A return to Chile that, how could it be otherwise, materialized together with Ted, who also made history, but not because of his positive football career, but because of the different hypotheses that still exist after his disappearance under strange circumstances.
¿Y Ted?
After his stay in Colo Colo and later retirement in Notts County in 1958, Ted returns to Chile and, incredibly, worked as an electronics technician at the first NASA facilities in the country. Seven years later, he would rededicate his life to soccer with a brief stint in El Salvador as a coach, before joining the US oil company Internacional Drilling Co.
Nestor Floresauthor of the book ‘The mysterious disappearance of Ted Robledo’, spoke with BioBioChile about the indecipherable life of the ex-soccer player in his constant boat trips, the writer’s hypothesis that Jorge’s brother works as a “spy for the British Crown” and his strange death in 1970.
While he was working at the oil company, Ted died in the Gulf of Oman on December 6, 1970.according to a death certificate released after a trial in Dubai against the sea captain Heinz Bessenichthe only accused of his disappearance, after he had a fight with the Chilean on one of his many trips.
The trial ends without guilty due to the lack of evidence and the news of the death of the former player reaches the national press three months later. “In fact, the most curious thing is that Jorge finds out about the case and the death of his brother from a journalist”reveals the writer.
But why the myth that Ted was a spy for the British Crown? Flores explains that, in addition to his disappearance and death under strange circumstances, there are precedents that, mixed with his personality and behavior with his family and his wife, reinforce this theory.
In addition to speaking three languages (Spanish, English and German), “He was an introvert, ‘painty’ and very elegant, he spent a lot on clothes and looked like an agent 007”, holds. A reserved attitude that “increased the myth even more”, according to the writer, who places his chips on the hypothesis of Ted’s close relationship with the British royal family being the real unknown regarding the reasonable question: What was the ex-soccer player doing on the day of his death?
“It is proven that Ted was in many places (and on dates) where the British Crown had conflicts with its colonies”emphasizes Flores, who specifies his theory in his book.
Another of the enigmas of this indecipherable case is the distance of the place of Ted’s death from the coast and that is that, according to the death certificate, he died three miles from the mainland.
“For a natural swimmer, swimming that distance was not a big problem. That would prove that they dumped him dead or badly wounded.”explains Nestor Flores.
An incontrovertible truth, but very difficult to prove, which was the result of long years of research and conversations with English experts and the widows of the Robledo brothers, Violeta del Carmen Calé y Gladys Nissimjoining the pieces of a puzzle from scratch, although still incomplete.