In the summer of 2019, when they signed David Raya, Brentford, then in the English second division, also signed Joel Valencia, an Ecuadorian raised in Zaragoza. They became friends immediately and spent a lot of time at the goalkeeper’s house. “It was bigger than mine,” Valencia laughs from Poland, where he plays for Zaglebie Sosnowiec. One day he went down to Raya’s room and found a kind of roadmap on the wall: “He had a list of goals: to play in the Premier League, for the Spanish national team…” Valencia recalls.
Despite how far away it all seemed, he didn’t think it was crazy. In fact, he had been telling him similar things since they started training together: “Don’t worry, you’re going to be in the national team. He was very insistent about that, I even bet with him, but I knew that as soon as they saw him more in another team, or in the Premier…” Raya himself recalled his friend’s insistence after making his debut in the Euros with Spain last June against Albania. In the previous Euros they had gone together, with some friends, to see Spain-Italy at Wembley, where a few weeks earlier he had been promoted to the Premier with Brentford: “He had a lot of faith in me and he told me: ‘In a few years you’ll be in the national team’.” Nine months later, Luis Enrique included him for the first time in a list and made him debut, curiously, also against Albania.
Perhaps the next point on Raya’s roadmap would be to play two consecutive matches against Spain, something that could happen this Sunday in Geneva (20.45, La1). La Roja faces Switzerland in the second day of the Nations League after Thursday’s draw against Serbia in Belgrade (0-0). Luis de la Fuente knew from the Euros that he was going to lose Unai Simón for several months, who needed surgery on his right hand. He had the operation in Madrid on July 18, just four days after winning the Euro.
The doctor who operated on him, Francisco Piñal, said that the goalkeeper suffered “a rupture of the ligament between the scaphoid and lunate bones”, which according to his estimates could mean “between four and five months out”. Athletic are a bit more optimistic, but in any case the coach had already taken into account that his absence would almost certainly leave him out of the six Nations matches scheduled from now until November, which opens another opportunity for Raya to advance, who has been the only alternative to the Athletic goalkeeper. Of the 19 matches in which both have coincided with De la Fuente, Unai has started in 15 and the Arsenal goalkeeper, in four. The next option, Álex Remiro, only played the second 45 minutes in a friendly against Colombia in March, when he came on precisely for Raya.
When all this was still a long way off, Joel Valencia was left with a trait that convinced him that the bet with his friend would pay off: “Goalkeepers make mistakes, and he knows it. What he has is that he doesn’t care, and he will be fine in the next play. He has incredible mental strength,” he says. “He will take risks and make mistakes, yes, but the benefit will be greater. I saw him in the Championship, where the goalkeeper is not as protected. For example, in the dead ball, he might have missed a couple of times, because there are also many fouls that are not called… But I think that inside his head he thinks: ‘I am the best.’”
There is some of that. He has worked on it. Since years ago he read a book and began to trust in the power of the law of attraction: “It is being very positive with yourself, believing in yourself a lot. Trying to set goals and trying to be very positive towards them. If you think positively about those things, you will attract them. I am a very positive person, who trusts a lot in myself and the truth is that this has worked very well for me,” he explained a few days ago when he joined this call at the Ciudad del Fútbol in Las Rozas.
All of this is supported by hard work and talent. Valencia was impressed by him from the moment they started training together with Brentford: “I saw him from the first day. I’ll give you an example. Sometimes you shoot badly and that’s partly why you score; and other times you shoot perfectly and they make a great save. David was good even when you shot badly. He was different. And not just as a goalkeeper. With his feet he was better than any other player, and that’s very good for modern football, for the style of the national team and Arsenal. But above all he’s a good person.”
That cocktail produced an unusual journey. At 16, Cornellà sent him to Blackburn, where he did not convince because of his short stature. So they loaned him to Southport, in the fifth English division, from where he began his rise: first back to Blackburn and then to Brentford in the second division from where he was promoted to the Premier League. Last season he played on loan at Arsenal, where he ended up overtaking Ramsdale, the local goalkeeper. At the end of the season, Arteta’s team executed the purchase option and now he is one of the candidates for player of the month of August in the Premier League after an incredible save on Watkins, with whom he coincided at Brentford and who left before him for the Premier League: “It is a save that is repeated a lot in training. We do a lot of actions of throwing yourself, getting up and going for another ball. But the context is different, it is a match and you have to try to replicate it there.” Work, talent and attraction.
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