Old, humble and perfect: lovable lump Kike García gives Alavés hope | Sid Lowe

Praise rarely comes striker’s way but after match-winning hat-trick at Betis, cult hero was showered with it

This could have only felt more right if you read about it on Teletext. On Saturday afternoon Kike García, the 6ft 1in, 12 stone, 35-year-old Deportivo Alavés centre-forward with a bit of the 80s about him, a player from the recent past who doesn’t always get a lot of goals but always gives every little thing he has got, scored the perfect hat-trick to defeat Real Betis 3-1. Right foot, left foot, header and the lovable lump from La Mancha who everyone assumes is Basque, all mud and guts, the man whose coach once called him a “hard-working oaf”, left the Benito Villamarín with the match ball under his arm, something for the cabinet at home. But that, he said, was not the best thing about it, not now, and he meant it too, which is the best thing about him.

“I’m not Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi; they’ll have 900 of these,” García said, exaggerating just a weensy bit, when another battle was over for another week and victory was secure at last, the bus waiting outside to head back to Vitoria, a few beers on board. Between them, those two have actually scored 80 in La Liga alone; as for García, in a 16-year career that has taken in tercera, segunda b, and segunda, that led him to the Championship with Middlesbrough, and didn’t reach primera until he was 27, until now he had only two: for Real Murcia against Mirandés a decade ago, and for Eibar against Alavés in 2021. That said, the second of those might just have been the best hat-trick La Liga has ever seen – you can insert your own apart from Messi asterisk here, and Rivaldo would certainly like a word – three goals that filled an empty ground, bringing a little hope where there was none. And this one wasn’t bad either.

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