Ama Maria was the happiest woman in the world. That was her little boy down there, scoring the goal that took Athletic Club -- the only team he had ever wanted to play for -- to the Supercopa de Espana final. And that, that was her little boy too, down there with him. Nico Williams' mum was there to see the moment the 19-year-old guided a gorgeous shot past Jan Oblak, tears welling up in her eyes; his brother was there too, right there. Inaki Williams plays with him, as he always has.
What's the point of all these words? What good can they do when the picture paints a million of them, more moving than they could ever hope to be? Just look at it, feel it. Look through it too, to everything that lies beyond, to everything it conveys, everything it means, everything it took to make this possible in the first place. A goal celebration that was so much more, that was everything.
SI TE QUIERO MÁS ME MUERO ❤️🩸🤩 pic.twitter.com/0sHujWOA8A
— IÑAKI WILLIAMS (@Williaaams45) January 13, 2022
When the ball hit the back of the Atletico Madrid net, together Athletic's players embraced Nico, the youngest of them: He's a special kid they have known for years, since he was tiny. One of them held back a little, bursting with pride. He waited because it was right and he wanted it to be just right. Just a little longer; it had been two decades coming, time to hold onto this moment. When the others had finished, standing back a little to watch, proud of them too, Inaki hugged his brother. Hard.
Inaki lifted Nico in the air, feet off the floor and held him there, dangling, still his little kid brother, the one he had raised before and raised now. "If I LOVED YOU ANY MORE, I WOULD DIE," he wrote later on social media. "I LOVE YOU, always together," Nico replied.
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- Highlights: Athletic Club come back to beat Atletico
- Report: Nico Williams the hero for Athletic Club
When at last it was over, they went to the stands and sought out their mum, their ama. She had held her sister when the goal was scored; now, she held her boys. The "chief", Inaki calls her. "She was very emotional," Nico said. "She told me I deserved it -- and to keep working, never to give up." Which sounds like her. The matriarch of whom Inaki said that, when he slacks off or relaxes a bit, gives him a couple of hostias ("whacks") to make him roll up his sleeves. The mother who is never off the phone, leaving voice messages full of advice so long it makes him laugh.
The woman who sat him down one day, aged 20, and told him the whole story, where it all began.
"And when I heard it, I was left cold, like: 'wow,'" Inaki recalled. "It's something that marks you, that makes you want to fight even more to try to return to your parents all the sacrifice they made for us. I could not repay that in my entire lifetime."
This was as close as he could have ever wished to come. This was not the first goal Nico Williams has first scored for Athletic, and they're not the first brothers to play professional football together. But there is something especially symbolic about them, something historic about what they had done, something different about their club and their importance there, and about their relationship. Something deeper. And if it was Nico's third goal -- he scored two in the Copa del Rey against Mancha Real last week -- it was the first he'd scored with his brother on the pitch with him.
A few days earlier, in the buildup to the Supercopa semifinal against Atlético, Inaki had said he would prefer Nico, rather than he, score the winning goal.
And so it was.
"I have dreamed of living this moment alongside my brother for a long time," Nico said afterward, looking and sounding like the kid he essentially still is. "What I take with me is the hug with my mum and brother. I'm very emotional to be able to share this moment with my brother and I hope there can be many more."
At 19, there should be. But perhaps none quite like this.
When Nico and Inaki's parents came to Spain, they crossed the Sahara by pickup truck and by foot: their father, Felix, had problems walking, the soles of his feet burnt. They climbed the fence into Melilla, Spain's North African enclave. Inaki later recalled taking his mother and Nico on holiday to Dubai and her breaking down in tears when she saw the dunes -- the wide, empty swathes of sand reminded her of that crossing.
