An 11-year-old, second-hand VW Beetle with more than 300,000km on the clock pulls over on Clown Fofó Street in the heart of Vallecas. The music goes off, the Smiths silenced and out gets Sergio Camello: movie aficionado with 156 films reviewed, part-time photographer, sometime drummer, Olympic gold medallist and the second-top goalscorer in Europe’s top five leagues. Engulfed in graffiti, stickers covering the glass between metal bars in red, a single step up from the street, the small door into Rayo Vallecano’s ground is locked, but in 64 hours it will open for the first time this season.
Forced to abandon their place, on Saturday at 2pm the tenants return. With the Madrid council declaring Estadio de Vallecas unsafe, unfit for purpose, Rayo’s home matches have instead been played in Leganés, out of the city to the south and boycotted by fans. Walking the neighbourhood that is proud of its social conscience, its community and its team, Camello can’t wait to be back again.
And not just for the football; maybe not even for the football. Yet the football is good too, good as it’s ever been. Across the continent’s top five leagues only Raphinha has more goals than Camello’s seven in seven league games and Camello himself has never had so many either.
Pichichi!’ It’s not Sergio any more.” Pichichi was the great Athletic Club striker whose name adorns the top-scorer award. And although there’s a tactical element, the new coach Beñat San José altering his movement, Camello looks deeper for an explanation. Above all he looks inside, which is where, from the beginning, another conversation starts: a simple question prompts a complex, nuanced and human discussion, the striker talking calmly, thoughtfully and with startling unexpected honesty.
Camello is that most unusual of footballers – prepared to speak on materialism, racism, or homophobia, social media “poison” or the housing crisis, that rare player prepared to use his platform, which he says was born of his upbringing but also learned being here in the barrio. This is personal, but at once universal too, something in his experience that is about everyone. Who knows, maybe there is something in what he has lived that can help, some reason to share it, the goals scored offering tangible proof of an intangible process.
To feel liberated, to enjoy it – and it’s been a long time since I enjoyed all this like this. Especially my twin brother Gonzalo; there’s a connection that goes beyond the human. He could see I wasn’t enjoying it much, wasn’t myself.
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