Tributes pour in for Michael Robinson: “You'll never walk alone”
Wednesday, April 29, 2020 @ 5:40 PM
SPANISH football fans have flooded the internet with messages after award-winning TV reporter Michael Robinson's death from cancer was announced earlier today.
The one-time star player – Robinson was European champion with Liverpool before joining Queen's Park Rangers, and then moving to Osasuna in 1987 – had an instantly-recognisable voice on the small screen and on the radio as Spain's only long-running sports commentator speaking in a second language.
After giving the commentary on a handful of UK Premier League matches on Spain's second channel, La 2, Robinson's big moment came in 1990 with the World Cup in Italy.
He was then 31, and had been living in Spain for three years.
His reporting on the World Cup, via TVE – the Spanish answer to the BBC – was the start of his becoming a household name in his adopted country.
Robinson joined Canal + when it first formed, and presented El Día Después ('The Day After') from its very first episode.
The Millennium saw him joining Cadena SER radio with his own programme, 'The Robinson Report' (El Informe Robinson), which gave him the chance to report on Spain's first-ever World Cup win in 2010 and the country's UEFA Euro 'sandwich', netting the title either side of its FIFA win in South Africa, in 2008 and 2012.
Those listening to the radio at the time of Spain's World Cup win found out, thanks to Michael, exactly what was going through Andrés Iniesta's head as he scored what has now been dubbed 'the goal of his life', the one which clinched the trophy for his country.
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