Until the last second Joselu Mato (Stuttgart, 1990) dreamed of being in the World Cup, of traveling to Qatar and making his big debut in the senior team. But a born auctioneer like him, a bigard of 192 centimeters, did not fit into Luis Enrique’s game plan. Not even his 7 goals with an irregular Espanyol in those first 14 league games were enough to convince the Asturian. But lo and behold, everything changed. There was a relief in the national bench and Luis de la Fuente wanted to make a clean slate. And, among many other novelties, he opted for a German-born striker with a Galician heart. Not only that, but on Saturday, in his debut, he gave him the alternative in the second part. Four minutes later, Joselu had already pierced Nyland’s network twice, starring in a movie premiere.
The Espanyol striker, a globetrotter who has passed through Spain, Germany and England, has been patient and has known how to wait for his opportunity and take advantage of it like no other. In Malaga he became the third oldest international to debut with the senior team after Puskas (34) and Argila (32). Of course, nobody surpasses his two goals in 107 seconds, a record in the history of Spanish rookies.
Minutes after the match, freshly showered, Joselu was walking through the mixed zone of La Rosaleda dressed in the official tracksuit and wearing a smile that those who know him say is contagious. “I still can’t believe it, this is the best”, he blurted out happily. The pichichi was not separated from a bag in which he carried the debut shirt with the 12 on his back, now a collector’s item. At his exit, his family was waiting for him, with little Leo and Lucas, restless but aware that dad had done something important. Also his mother, whose embrace displayed an indescribable emotion.
In the Federation, with De la Fuente at the helm, they were convinced that Joselu was going to fit in wonderfully in the dressing room and that’s how it has been. Reports from Espanyol came to Las Rozas highlighting the striker’s affable personality, one of those who help to form a group. The only words of praise came out of the blue and white club towards their striker, the great hope to get Diego Martínez’s men out of the quagmire. Joselu had starred in an unprecedented scene this Christmas in Cornellà, when he gave all the workers involved in the first team a basket with Galician products. He is a footballer who makes himself loved.
But the information from Espanyol was not the only argument to trust in the good integration of Joselu in the dressing room of Spain, where he was not going to be any stranger. For starters, he has a member of his in-laws among those summoned. His wife Melanie is Daphne’s twin sister, Carvajal’s wife, his brother-in-law. A relationship that also goes back a long way, because both footballers shared a dressing room at Castilla de Toril that was promoted to Segunda in 2012, a team in which Joselu was a goal devourer, including 7 in the 4 games of the promotion promotion . Talents such as Lucas Vázquez, Jesé… and Nacho and Morata also emerged from that indelible Madrid generation, also teammates in the dressing room a decade later at Las Rozas.
Joselu was born in Germany and did not come to Spain until he was 4 years old. He is a goalscorer that John le Carré would say he came in from the cold.
