Minute's silence for Moncho Monsalve observed at Jesús Navas before Sevilla vs Real Madrid Femenino
- Sevilla and Real Madrid observed a minute’s silence at Jesús Navas Stadium on May 2 before their Liga F match, honoring Moncho Monsalve. - The tribute came four days after Monsalve died at 81; Real Madrid then won 2-0, with second-half goals from Alba Redondo and Naomie Feller. - It mattered because Monsalve’s legacy crossed sports — a Real Madrid basketball great remembered on a women’s football stage in Seville.
A women’s football match in Seville turned into something bigger before kickoff on Saturday, May 2. Sevilla FC Femenino and Real Madrid Femenino stood together at Jesús Navas Stadium for a minute’s silence in memory of Moncho Monsalve — a Real Madrid basketball legend who died on April 28 at 81. Then the game started, and Real Madrid won 0-2. But the part people will remember first is the pause before the whistle. ### Who was Moncho Monsalve? Monsalve mattered in Spanish basketball in two different lives — first as a player, then as a coach. He played for Real Madrid and Spain, and his playing career was loaded with silverware: 3 European Cups, 3 Spanish leagues, and 3 Spanish Cups with Madrid. He also played 61 times for the national team and won silver at the 1963 Mediterranean Games. ### Why was a football match honoring him? Because in Spain, big clubs don’t really live inside one sport. Real Madrid is a football institution, obviously, but it is also one of Europe’s historic basketball clubs. Monsalve belongs to that wider club memory. So when Real Madrid’s women’s team traveled to Sevilla for a match. ### Why did this tribute land so strongly? The timing is part of it. Monsalve had died only four days earlier, on April 28, so the grief was still fresh. And he was not just an old name from the archive. Spain’s basketball federation had inducted him into the Spanish Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024, which tells you he was still being actively recognized as one of the sport’s important figures, not just remembered nostalgically. ### What exactly happened in Seville? The ceremony was simple. Jesús Navas Stadium observed a minute’s silence before the start of Sevilla vs. Real Madrid in Liga F. Real Madrid’s own match report framed it as a tribute to “one of the great legends” of both the club and Spanish basketball. That wording is the key bit — this was not a generic memorial gesture, but a direct acknowledgment of Monsalve’s place in Madrid’s history. ### And what happened in the match? After the tribute, Real Madrid handled the game. They beat Sevilla 0-2, with Alba Redondo and Naomie Feller scoring in the second half. The win was Madrid’s 20th league victory of the season. Sevilla came in as a solid mid-table side, but Madrid were chasing the top end of Liga F and looked like the sharper team once the match opened up. ### Why does the Sevilla setting matter? Because it shows how sports culture actually works on the ground. This was not a tribute staged inside Real Madrid’s own basketball arena, where you would expect it. It happened in Seville, before an away women’s football match, with the home club participating. It is an inference, but it fits the way both clubs treated the occasion. ### Was Monsalve already being honored elsewhere? Yes — and that adds to the sense that this was part of a broader farewell. Real Madrid had already published an official statement after his death, and the club’s basketball side also held a minute’s silence at the Movistar Arena earlier in the week. So the scene at Jesús Navas was one stop in a larger chain of tributes, not a one-off gesture. ### Bottom line? This was a small ceremony, but not a small story. A Liga F match became a place where Spanish sport paused for one of its old giants — and where Moncho Monsalve’s basketball legacy reached well beyond basketball itself.
