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

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.

It might also turn out to be even more important on a huge weekend at the bottom, Alavés calling him “your dad and every day more people’s dad”, which is a worry but not impossible. Few have scored hat-tricks older: Barcelona’s record is held by Robert Lewandowski at 36, Alfredo Di Stéfano was 37 when he got his last for Real Madrid, and Joaquín and Jorge Molina are out in front of everyone else, ever, at 38 and 39 respectively. And for all that he’s getting on a bit, he might just be better than ever before. “A hurricane”, AS reckoned. Marca called him “unstoppable”. And Noticias de Álava didn’t call him anything: there are, they said, no words left to describe how important he has become.

Marc Bartra certainly couldn’t stop him, suddenly transported back to that night at Mestalla a decade ago. Only this time, as García out-sprinted him like Gareth Bale had before, slipping to the floor, getting up again, and escaping into the area, the former Barcelona defender did pull down his man, giving away a penalty from which García scored the first, 73 years and 12 yards between him and Betis goalkeeper Adrián. He won another penalty soon after and although that was ruled out by VAR, García’s awful dive seen for what it was, two more followed in the second half. The first, a wonderful first-time shot on the half turn. The second, an absurdly impressive header, neck twisting and bending around the ball like it belonged to a giraffe, celebrated by everyone.

There is something about García. “I am anything but a superstar, I think we all know that,” he says, which only makes him even more of one, an everyman with cult hero written all over him. One of five children, born in Motilla del Palancar, Cuenca province, where many of the 6,000 population worked in the factory where they make indicators for cars, and where he would stack up firewood for goalposts as a kid, he likes to pick olives in the morning and spent the last day of his summer holiday playing petanca with the old folk in the town. A man of no airs and fewer graces and all the more popular for it, his is a career built on effort and more talent than is normally recognised, blinded by his body shape, an apparent clunkiness that belies his ability. A footballer who says he still gets those pre-match nerves that send you running for the toilet “four or five times” they call him el obrero del gol, the labourer of goals.

It is a title he says he identifies with and one which is at least half right. García has always worked like few others, that’s for sure. It’s the goal part that has sometimes resisted but he has been so generous, so honest, so committed, so much about the collective, so normal as to be abnormal, that he has always been embraced anyway. In 2013-14, he scored 23 times in 41 games in the second division, only for Real Murcia to get relegated. Since then, he has only got into double figures once, scoring 11 in 37 games for Eibar. That year, they ended up relegated, too. In the five seasons between those, he scored nine, four, seven, eight, three and five league goals. On Saturday, he scored as many as in the whole of last season and one more than in the whole of the year before. It took him to eight for the season in the league, 10 in total – as many as the last three years put together.

This was his night, the coach said, and yet asked about it afterwards, what emerged above all was a hint of awkwardness, like a man genuinely a little embarrassed to be there. Or at least to be asked about it, and in front of the cameras too. “I don’t want to talk about me,” García said – and you actually believed him. Instead, a teammates’ teammate, he wanted to talk about how Alavés had needed this, and how it could have been anyone. How together, they were going to do this.

They had needed it even more than they had imagined. This was some weekend at the wrong end of La Liga; one in which four of the bottom six won and five of them collected points, everything changing to stay much the same. In which, as it all unfolded, the bottom place changed hands, from Valencia to Valladolid, and three different teams occupied the final relegation spot: first Espanyol, then Alavés, then Getafe, then Espanyol again.

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It had started on Friday night, when Roberto Fernández, signed by Espanyol three days before, registered that morning, came on, played 11 minutes, scored the winner against fellow strugglers Valladolid, saved coach, Manolo González, from the sack and secured their first win in six weeks, pulling them off the bottom – and keeping up an incredible Ian Rush of a record of not losing any of the 50 games in which he has scored, going all the way back to when he was 17 and playing for San Félix. It ended 48 hours later on Sunday night with Valencia finally winning after eight games, their first victory under new coach, Carlos Corberán, secured when Hugo Duro got the only goal against Real Sociedad and then, in his own words, implored his teammates to “defend like bastards”. Which, this time, they did, sending Valladolid to the foot of the table.

Either side of those, Getafe drew with Barcelona on Saturday, Hansi Flick admitting that being thrown into the Coliseum was “a new experience for me”. Two hours later and seven kilometres round the ring road, Leganés captain, Sergio González, gathered the players in a huddle, said “we’ve beaten one league leader”, and sent them out to beat another, ending Atlético Madrid’s 15-game winning run. And between those two games to the south of Madrid – celebrated in the north of the city where Real went top again – there was Alavés at Betis.

Espanyol’s win the night before meant that for the first time in 18 months, having not won since 1 November, Alavés began the day in the relegation zone, reality staring them in the face but García’s hat-trick meant they ended the day out of it again. “Sometimes we will be in, sometimes we will be out … and today we are out,” Eduardo Coudet said, having won his first game as their coach. There is work to be done, the one thing that will never be lacking, and García knows that better than anyone: the last two times he got a hat-trick, relegation followed. This is one hat-trick he would rather not have.

“It’s nice to take the ball, a nice memory: I will get my teammates to sign it and one day I will remember this with a smile on my face,” García said. “But I don’t like praising anyone individually, still less myself, and what I take with me is the win. We’re working like animals and, God willing, this is a turning point. We have been suffering for weeks and we’re giving our lives. No one wants to be in the second division. It’s bad for the city, bad for the team, bad for everyone at the club. We have to realise that. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it together. No one is going to do it for us.”

Source: theguardian.com