Granada’s little ‘diamond’ earned a Spain call-up after almost beating the champions single-handedly with street football
Bryan Zaragoza’s mum hadn’t slept, her stomach hurt and she couldn’t stop fiddling with her phone. She was tense and nervous and she couldn’t relax, the messages mounting up as the moment got closer: the day her little boy, the winger who grew up watching Lionel Messi and was in the third tier a year ago, faced Barcelona for the first time. He, on the other hand, was not: “I never get nervous,” the Granada forward said, and it showed. Which is why he admitted he had been calming her down and why after midnight on Sunday, when it was all over, they still hadn’t spoken but he had seen her, up there among the delirious crowd with a look of happiness on her face.
It had been his grand night – not his first and maybe not even his best but certainly his biggest and most emotional – and long after everyone else had left, Zaragoza was still there, standing beneath the silent stands trying to take it all in. Trying to take out what he called a “thorn” from his side too; that still hurt, he said, despite everything. The clock had shown 87.34 when he cracked a shot against Marc-André ter Stegen’s post. On the night when the team who are second-bottom had gone into a 2-0 lead only for Barcelona to come back to draw 2-2, Sergi Roberto equalising two minutes before, Zaragoza’s shot would have put Granada 3-2 up. It would also have been ridiculous.
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