At Las Palmas, Quique Setién has proved that football is fun, not least in their crazy 3-3 draw with Celta Vigo at the weekend
Quique Setién said he was a Rolling Stone, but not which one. Keef, probably. An errand boy at a pharmaceutical college at 14, a beach football international and a proper football international too, somewhere on the bench at Mexico 86, he said he’d have cut off his little finger to play under Johan Cruyff, claimed that Juan Carlos Valerón made him cry, asked Leo Messi never to retire, excitedly sought out Luka Modric to tell him how much he loves watching him and bemoaned dribblers becoming an “endangered species.” A chess fanatic who gave Garry Kasparov a game, Deep Blue too, he said what happened on the board was too often better than what happened on the pitch – and then did something about it.
He’s a man of his word, after all. “It’ll be a lovely game; one of the nicest of the weekend,” he said on Saturday morning, and on Sunday night it was. Not just the nicest of the weekend, one of the nicest of the season. A wild and wonderful 3-3 draw between his Unión Deportivo de Las Palmas – and it really is his Unión Deportiva de Las Palmas – and Eduardo Berizzo’s Celta de Vigo in Gran Canaria. A festival of goals and another reminder of something easily forgotten: that football is fun, that beyond the table and the targets, there’s glory in every game; joy, happiness, moments. Matches mean something even when they don’t mean anything.
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