Nico Williams He narrowly missed the first leg of the Cup semifinals against Osasuna. His entry into the second part was noticed by the Athletic Club, but who ended up taking that battle 1-0 was the “rojillo” team. Today (9:00 p.m., La1) he awaits the return with everything to be decided and with Nico available to play from the start. “This match is highly anticipated by me. I really want to play it, to get a pass to the final, to give the athleticzales that opportunity. Hopefully we can take the Cup home, take the barge out and have a spectacular day because we don’t I know what that is”, assured the winger in an interview with Europa Press.
The reunion of the entire Williams family
Nico fulfills his contract in 2024 and he is thinking about his future because he has many girlfriends, but now he is focused on helping the Cup return to a team that has been waiting for that moment since the course 1983-84. In the 21st century he has played five finals and has not been able to lift the title. In the 21st century, in 2002, Nico Williams was also born, and eleven years later he was already in the lower categories of Athletic Club, following in the footsteps of his brother Iñaki. “We already knew him, because in Navarra we have people to see the boys. His brother Iñaki (who was a footballer for the rojiblancos) was already close to making it to the first team and was in a residence, his mother with his father in Pamplona… We decided that it was time to incorporate the family unit”, he explains for this newspaper Jose Mari Amorrortuthe person in charge of your arrival in Lezama.
Nico was very small and they looked for a house for everyone. Iñaki, eight years older and who will also start tonight, grew up in the Navarrese capital with his brother and his family after the story they have told several times, with their parents’ trip from Ghana to Spain, crossing the desert and jumping the fence in Melilla. Iñaki was going to the sadar, but he never played for Osasuna, although the club was interested in him. But he went to Athletic from Pamplona, entity linked to the Bilbao team. Nico was also a part of Pamplona, who did spend a year at the Osasuna branch before going to Bilbao. Félix Taínta, his representative, told “Diario de Navarra” that the youngest of the Williamses has good memories of that year and that he does not forget that once the reddish shield was worn on his chest.
“He already had that speed and those skills, although with a fry then you never know”
But tonight is not a game for sentimentality. “From the first day his adaptation was very good. Since the whole family came… There are times when at certain ages they have more difficulties, if they are in residences, for example, but with him there was no problem, he was adapted and integrated very quickly. He is a very cheerful boy, and as a player he was already very dynamic and very fast. Technically he has always had many skills and abilities. He was already aiming, although you can never predict what it will be as a juvenile”, reveals Amorrortu. Of course, from those years as a boy he reveals how sometimes they had to ask Iñaki to lend them a hand: “Help us to apply himself a little more in his studies …”, he remembers that he had to tell him once. “He is his older brother and has tutored him. Nico saw him as a mirror,” continues Amorrortu.
Indispensable for Valverde
The player project that it was has come true. With 20 years he played the past Qatar World Cupcalled by Luis Enrique, and the new coach, Luis de la Fuente, also has him, as he did in the under 21s. Valverde has used him in all but one game this season, in the League against Girona due to the injury that caused him to have to play only for a while in the first leg of the semifinals. He has seven goals scored this season. His debut with the first team was on April 28, 2021, just ten days after Athletic Club lost the Cup against Barcelona in The Charterhouse (0-4). His brother Iñaki did play that final, and those of 2015 and 2020 (also played in April 2021 due to the pandemic).
Playing together has been fulfilling a dream. Winning a Cup side by side would be the ultimate.