Trail of the Lion King

Jen and I often call into Spain for a few days when flying in or out of the UK. In recent years we’ve stayed in some of the bigger cities such as Barcelona, Seville and Granada, as well as some of the quieter locations in Tortosa, Toledo, Girona and Baza. This time we were staying a couple of nights in each of Vitoria-Gastiez and Laguardia and we landed at Saturday lunchtime in nearby Bilbao.

In a stroke of good fortune, or more truthfully a consequence of sensible planning ahead, Athletic Bilbao had a La Liga game that afternoon against Celta Vigo at their newish San Mames stadium. I’d bought a ticket online a few days earlier and after leaving Jen in a coffee shop made my way to the game.

It was busy outside the five-year old stadium, with fans drinking in just about every bar in a long street leading to the ground. I was surprised at how many away supporters were there. Fans don’t really travel in numbers in Spain, or at least they didn’t in the past, and it’s a fair distance to Galicia. Maybe it being Easter weekend made a difference.

San Mames is an impressive stadium with a steepish incline to the seating that keeps you close to the pitch even if you are towards the top of your stand. I’d paid sixty euros for a seat in row seventeen of the upper tier of the tunnel side of the pitch. I could have got away with paying forty euros if I’d been prepared to sit a bit higher up and alternatively if I’d wanted to be in row fifteen or lower it would have cost me eighty euros. The fifty-three thousand capacity ground was around two-thirds full.

As ever I’d had a look in advance to see if I knew any of the players and it turned out that Bilbao had an ex-Boro player, Kike, on their books.  It wasn’t the Kike that played for us for a couple of years though who due to the quantity of Kikes in Spain now has to call himself Kike Garcia, but the other one, Kike Sola. My Spanish was never brilliant and is getting worse these days, but I’m reasonably confident that Garcia must mean ‘genuine’ or ‘original’, whilst Sola will likely translate as either ‘fake’ or ‘spare’.

I actually saw the entire Boro career of Fake Kike. It began with a forty-five minute debut at home to Blackburn where if I recall correctly he looked what might be politely described as ‘well off the pace’. He got the hook at half-time before concluding his contribution to our promotion campaign with the last five minutes away to MK Dons. I have no recollection of him whatsoever on that occasion, but I trust he enjoyed Jordan Rhodes’ injury time equaliser as much as the rest of us did.

He sat on the bench for the Boro a couple more times before quietly disappearing back to Spain. I doubt he’ll bother attending the promotion team reunions. I didn’t hold out much hope of seeing him today though as despite being allocated the number nine shirt the nearest he had been to a game had been a spell on the bench a few weeks ago. In the Boro v Blackburn photo below he’s the fella being marked by two players.

Celta Vigo provided the opposition. I’d watched them a few times when I lived in Spain, but that’s twelve years ago now so I wasn’t expecting any of the players that I’d seen then to still be at the club. However, that Iago fella’s name seemed familiar. A quick check suggests that may be because he had a season at Liverpool that had either passed me by during our Championship years or I had completely forgotten about. However, a further check showed that he’d made twenty-one league appearances for Celta’s reserve team in the 2006-07 season.

I’d watched the B team play Ferrol at the Campo Municipal de Barriero that season, and there’s a two in three chance that he will have played in that match. I certainly remember his brother Jonathan turning out for Celta’s first team at that time, as much for his name I think as anything he’d done on the pitch. I checked my photos from way back then, but most of them were of the crowd rather than the players and so I’m none the wiser if I’ve seen Iago before or not.

As expected, there was no sign of Fake Kike. The first half was goalless, with Williams posing a bit of a threat for the home side. He picked up a booking for diving that seemed a bit harsh, but the ref was a little closer to play than I was. There’s no alcohol served in the higher divisions in Spain, but I was driving anyway, so it didn’t really matter. I was tempted by the pork bocadillo, although not quite enough to bother queuing.

In the second half Williams risked a second card when he went down in the box in a similar way to the way he had done before the break. He didn’t get the penalty but avoided the card. Iago put himself about for the visitors but never looked like getting on the score-sheet. I moved down about a dozen rows to sample the view from the more expensive seats.

Athletic took a lead early in the second half that you could probably say was deserved but an injury time equaliser left the home fans well and truly pissed off. I don’t know why, neither side was in danger of relegation or of reaching a European spot. Save your anguish for when it matters. Mind you, it could have been worse for Bilbao as in the remaining added time Celta went on to hit the post and then have a goal disallowed. That would have given the Basques something to complain about.