The Spanish singer Víctor Manuel has described everything Florentino has been saying recently as "un espanto", a judgement carried as the headline of an interview published by ABC. The remark is the only reference to Florentino in the interview text.
In the conversation, Manuel traced a lifelong relationship with football. His favourite image of himself, he said, is as a boy running after a ball on a sloping meadow in Asturias, and he played for several youth sides in Mieres, his home town. Later he had a trial with Caudal, turning out in a few matches alongside players who went on to become important at Sporting, and he realised they had greater stamina and talent than he did; he described himself as merely a willing trier.
In 2005 he was invited to sing the centenary anthem of Sporting. He said the idea had never occurred to him and had never been a dream of his, and that when he mentioned it to Serrat, the fellow singer told him not to do it — a warning attributed to Serrat in Manuel's account to ABC.
"Because it never turns out well. Teams always have an anthem, good or bad, that is the one the fans have in their heads. And whatever you do doesn't matter, whether it's good or bad."
Manuel ignored the advice and went ahead with the anthem anyway. He noted afterwards that Joaquín Sabina wrote an excellent one for Atlético and that C. Tangana did one for Celta.