Inaki Williams also took a "break"

Inaki Williams also took a "break"



Photo by Sergio Ruiz for PRESSIN, via LaPresse

in the field for six years and nine months

Francesco Gottardi

It has been 2,478 days, and 251 La Liga games, since 17 April 2016, since the Athletic Bilbao striker last missed a match. Last week in the Copa del Rey a muscle overload arrived and this Sunday his endless streak ended

The last time that Inaki Williams he had missed a Liga match, that same Sunday Francesco Totti scored and the Italians voted in the referendum on the drills. Spain were the reigning European champions. Obama resided in the White House. Apple had just launched the Airpods.

Six years and nine months have passed since April 17, 2016: 2,478 days, or 251 matches in the Spanish league. All of them, uninterruptedly played by the indestructible Athletic Bilbao striker. A primacy "beyond all logic", the word of doctors and physiotherapists, especially considering today's frenzied football calendars. In the end however, last week in the Copa del Rey the muscle overload arrived. And Iñaki Williams was unable to play against Celta Vigo on Sunday, ending an impressive run. "I would be lying", he said, "if I said I played every time without pain or infiltration". But he had always done it until now.

Ironically, the class of '94 ultramarathon started with Ernesto Valverde on the bench and ended with Valverde. "It was destiny", smiles the coach, who had led Barça from 2017 to 2020 and then returned to Bilbao. “But sooner or later it had to happen: the boy accused a little resentment and I didn't want to force it. What sense would he have had him?”.

It's the most normal thing in the world to miss a match playing every three days. But Williams had made it extraordinary, even more for his technical characteristics: both a cross-country skier and a sprinter, full-range moped, physically dominant. And rather prone to records: in addition to that of duration, the number 9 of Athletic (whom he has always played with since he was 19) he was the fastest player in La Liga already in 2015 (36 km/h sprint) and the first of African ethnicity to serve and score for the Basque team.

Six years ago, at the start of the famous 251 games, he made his debut for the Spanish national team. But only in a friendly way. And in the end Iñaki chose to represent Ghana, with whom he took part in the last World Cup in Qatar. "In honor of his grandfather", while his younger brother Nico, who is also now at Athletic, was part of Luis Enrique's red fury in Doha.

They are the two faces of a troubled family history, which beyond any rhetoric has allowed second-generation immigrants to start being part of Athletic's rigid and renowned youth teams. “As a child, I was the black of the cantera,” says Iñaki. “Today I finally see a cosmopolitan nursery”, united by the Basque culture rather than blood origins. And the Williamses led the way: Iñaki's mother was pregnant when she traveled across the Sahara to Melilla, a Spanish territory in North Africa. There she had to tell that she came from Liberia (where there was war at the time, unlike Ghana), to be welcomed as a refugee together with her husband. The couple thus ended up in Bilbao and named their unborn child after the priest who had helped them integrate into the community. Complete with an Athletic shirt, while the child was growing up in the streets of Casco Viejo. “If my body resists that long it's a matter of luck, a lot of training and a bit of genetics”. Indeed, compared to crossing the desert, 251 games in a row even seem trivial.



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