Between Ghana and Melilla there are more than 4,000 kilometers. If they travel in clandestine trucks, on foot through the Sahara and threatened by mafias, it becomes hell. Félix and María, the parents of the Williams brothers, had to make this horrible journey that thousands of Africans make escaping their countries and searching for a decent life. Many perish on the way. After jumping the fence and being detained by the Civil Guard, they finally avoided repatriation by requesting political asylum. They said they came from a country at war like Liberia. A lie, as pious as it was vital, that radically changed his destiny and that of his family.
Who was going to tell them then, when their future hung by a thread, that their little son, Nico Williams, was going to be the trigger for a century-old football club like Athletic Club to recover the throne of the Copa del Rey 40 years later? against Mallorca. The barge will finally set sail from the Bilbao estuary thanks, in large part, to the youngest Williams, the result of a miracle in the bowels of Africa. The goal for the Bilbao team was from Sancet and in the penalty shootout Agirrezabala took center stage, but Nico’s game was a monument, obviously MVP of the final.
He started nervous, like everyone in Athletic. It was difficult for him to lower the revs, to find the middle ground between his quality and his speed to be that unstoppable dagger on the left wing. He started the match with a drive and a forced shot. He continued to face Gio González again and again who drove him crazy. He managed to score after a carat wall with Ruiz de Galarreta, but he was offside.
Before the break he sent a ball to the side of the net that many in the stands saw going in. And at the beginning of the second half he dressed as an assistant to connect with a Sancet who sent the ball into the squad. He could still have been the definitive hero in extra time, but Maffeo, in extremis, prevented the winning goal. It was the umpteenth action for the winger, who established himself as a world-class footballer, with an imbalance within the reach of very few in football.
Nico and Athletic were the face and Mallorca the tail, the loser of a genuine football final. It was an authentic football day, far from the increasingly commercialized king of the sport that sells its soul to sheikhs. Since both teams entered the final, both fans have moved heaven and earth to find a ticket and the means to travel, in many cases spending their savings, to be at an event that in their hearts they considered historic.
A part of Mallorcanism traveled by plane and the rest did not mind traveling for hours by boat to the Valencian coast to follow the route by car. Nor were Athletic fans discouraged by having lost the five previous finals. There were only 20,698 for each fan, but up to 70,000 Basque fans crossed the Peninsula to support the lions. Seville was dyed red and white and vermilion for a few hours. The fan zones of both teams became small, the two venues converted into spaces of brotherhood and good vibes, only that idyllic image was broken by four madmen who were involved in altercations. In La Cartuja the usual football was seen, with both parishes dressed in their respective colors and cheering to the hilt. Very far from what has been seen for five years in Saudi Arabia, home of the Spanish Super Cup and a living image of modern football.
