The Pride of Vallekas

Today's article is all about players who moved in 2015. Asunción-based club Cerro Porteño shockingly released legendary Spanish goalscorer Daniel Güiza, who was the Pichichi winner in 2008 playing for seventh place Mallorca – ahead of the likes of Luís Fabiano, Sergio Agüero, Raúl, David Villa, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Diego Forlán, Frédéric Kanouté and Samuel Eto’o. He was instrumental in Spain’s Euro 2008 win too. In 2015, the then 35-year-old, signed for third-tier Andalusia-based Cádiz. Whose fans were irritated by his origin from fierce rivals Xerez, and by his commitment made ten years ago to never play for – you guessed it – Cádiz. And yet, less than a year later, it was Güiza who scored the only goal at Hércules in the second leg of the play-off finals (2–0 on aggregate), helping the club return to the second division after six years. Look at Asturian player Miguel Marcos Madera aka “Míchel”. In January 2010 he was a Sporting Gijón legend, joined Birmingham and was ...

Yesterday, I wrote an article about Carlos Aranda, who holds the record for playing in La Liga for the most number of clubs - eight. If you consider just playing for a La Liga club, not actually playing in La Liga with them, that figure becomes nine. But I dug deeper, and found out that if you look at professional clubs (La Liga and Segunda), Carlos Aranda holds that record jointly with Moisés García - an astonishing 12 clubs.  Obviously, only if you use the second metric - by the first metric  Moisés García is top with 12 and Aranda comes joint second with 11 with a couple of other players. That record will be broken soon though - there are quite a few players who are at 11, and they still have a couple of seasons in the tank. So today, I look at a player whose records are unlikely to be broken anytime soon - Elche's Nino.  Even his name has the word modest in it. Juan Francisco Martínez Modesto, aka Nino, was born in Vera, Almería, and first appeared p...