The Pride of Vallekas

After writing about  Diego Cascón  and his crazy story ( here ), I thought it might be worth a look at the other ten players who started in the Alcorcónazo. It’s a great quiz question: which lawyer has scored against Real Madrid, twice in the same match, whilst playing for a third tier team on a wage of less than 40,000 euros a year? Hint: this player has scored six goals past Real Madrid, yet has never played a game in La Liga. Poetically enough, he is a Real Madrid youth graduate. Answer?  Borja Pérez . In the 2003-04 Copa del Rey, Segunda outfit Leganés were up against Real Madrid in the round of 32. At the Butarque, Real Madrid were cruising - 2-0 up thanks to goals from Beckham and Raúl. In ten minutes, they were 3-2 down from two Borja Pérez goals and a Pavón own goal. In the 88th minute, midfielder Solari scored to equalize, and Raúl scored a 110th minute extra time goal to send Madrid through. Four years later, Segunda B outfi...

So far, he has played 207 games at Rayo, 119 at Celta, 64 at Las Palmas, 12 at Numancia, 75 at Real Madrid B and 122 at Barcelona B. Yes - if Roberto Trashorras plays this weekend, he would have played 600* professional games in a long and illustrious career.  I feel bad for Trashorras. He started out in the Segunda B at the age of 18, reached the Segunda at 24 and then La Liga at 30. His story is one that shows that hard work and dedication can take you places, and that age is no barrier to success. And then after five years of La Liga glory the club that put in faith in him got relegated. Of course, I'm happy and grateful that he stayed as a Rayo fan - but I wouldn't have begrudged him if he'd taken that offer from Deportivo. He deserved to stay in La Liga. I wrote about him here , but that is just a snapshot of his career - a career about which I'm finally going to write about. So, let's "continue" that article... Trashorras took his ...