The Pride of Vallekas

If you read the Porto piece yesterday , you would have seen the story of a player who lasted just 16 minutes at Rayo. But he was competing for the Q letter with another player, who lasted slightly longer - 58 minutes, to be exact. Felipe Miñambres, our ex-sporting director, once said that "we can't offer potential new players anything tangible; what we can offer them is affection and a shop window". Hugo Álvarez Quintas made just one league appearance for Rayo, and yet he deserves an entire article. And that's because he represents another facet of Rayo's transfer policy - the facet of resignation at the prospect of losing all their best players. This is the story of a player who used Rayo as a springboard for his career. Born in Vigo, Galicia, Álvarez made his senior debut with Tercera side Las Rozas, after playing youth football with Celta de Vigo and Real Madrid. He first arrived in Segunda B in the 2006 summer by signing for Rayo Vallecano, but played ...

If you read the piece on Javi Lara , you would see that Eibar gave a La Liga chance to a 28-year-old who had just finished his first successful Segunda season. But seven years earlier, Eibar gave a Segunda chance to a 31-year-old player who had never played in the professional leagues. This is a story of perseverance, dedication, and the rarity of opportunity. This is the story of Raúl García Fernández. He is one of the Segunda B's greatest ever players. The third best, some would say - he has played 42539 minutes in the third tier, the third most in the league. It all started in the 1994-95 season, in the ranks of Real Unión de Irún in the Segunda B. Gonzalo Arconada gave him his debut, and at the age of just 18 he was already a regular starter. After three seasons at Real Unión and a season at Racing Ferrol he landed in Barakaldo. For four seasons, between 1998 and 2002, Barakaldo were coached by Alfonso Del Barrio and Peio Aguirreoa. And for all four of them Raúl Ga...

Welcome back to the mini-series focusing on the technical players at Córdoba! This is part 2...you can read yesterday's piece - part 1 - here . Wow, two days in a row - that's a first! 24th August, 2014. It was Eibar's first ever goal in La Liga, in their first ever game in La Liga, their first La Liga Basque derby....their first of many. And it was a hell of a goal. In their own stadium, a player who was making his La Liga debut scored a free-kick from the tightest possible angle, just a few meters from the corner flag, just before half-time. The perfect kick of the ball to kick-start Eibar's dream season. The celebration by the 28-year-old said it all - not just the goal he had scored, but the struggle of being in that moment, in that stadium, in the top tier, in football at all, scoring a goal against a Europa league team. Exactly, four years before that goal, Javi Lara was without a team, having been released from yet another Segunda B side. By the...

I interviewed Mikel Alonso in December 2015, where he opened up about his hiatus from professional football. You can read it here . He agreed to a second interview, where I ask some more questions about his experiences as a footballer. This is that interview. Before Real Sociedad, you were playing for Antiguoko. This is an academy that has produced amazing footballers such as yourself, your brother, Mikel Arteta, etc. What is it that differs it from other academies? Did you see anyone play there who you knew were going to be playing top level football - apart from yourself, of course! We worked a lot on technique and skills. It was a different kind of academy. The coaches made all the difference - Iñigo Santin, Pitu, Txurun, Oscar, Kepa Estebanez and many others. They loved this game and show us how to love it and understand it. We tried to look at the big picture of various game situations. They were inspirational. The managers were really passionate and tried to pick the b...