Featured Image Credit: Getty Images
Topics: Athletic Bilbao, La Liga, Spain, Ghana
Jack Kenmare
This one isn't for the faint-hearted. Inaki Williams, the Athletic Bilbao and Ghana forward, has played the last two years with an injury that might just make your eyes water.
The 29-year-old, who memorably featured in 251 consecutive league games for boyhood club Los Leones, will miss their final game of the season against Rayo Vallecano on Saturday.
Bilbao manager Ernesto Valverde confirmed to reporters on Friday afternoon that Williams is currently recovering from surgery after struggling with an ongoing foot problem.
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And this all sounds relatively normal, right? Not quite. It turns out the striker has been playing with a two centimetre shard of glass embedded in the sole of his foot.
Williams, who has recorded the second-most minutes of any Bilbao player in La Liga this season, suffered an accident in 2022, when he stepped on a smashed piece of glass.
He thought his foot had healed soon after and continued playing, but little did he know that a large shard of glass was still lodged in there.
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Valverde provided an update in his press conference ahead of Saturday's trip to Madrid.
“We did a scan after the final, and we discovered that he still had some glass in his foot," he said.
"When they stitched him up the first time, they left the glass in there. In addition, it’s not a small piece, it’s about 2cm. It was next to a bone or a tendon, but we had to extract it."
Valverde added: "The truth is that myself and the doctor were laughing because we couldn’t believe it.”
Williams' story is a quite remarkable one. Before he was born, his parents, Maria and Felix, left Ghana and walked barefoot across the Sahara desert without food or water to get to Spain.
Felix had told his sons they arrived in Bilbao via plane but eventually, the inspiring truth was revealed.
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"My parents are both from Ghana. They are superheroes for me and my brother," Williams told El Hormiguero.
"They left their whole lives behind. I always asked him and my mother how he got to Spain. Since childhood he told me that they arrived by plane.
"My father then told me the real story. My hair stood on end. Knowing that your parents have walked the Sahara desert. My barefoot father saw people die on the road and put them in a prison as war refugees.
"Thanks to the fact that they found good people who helped them, that opened the possibility of reaching Bilbao and that is why I am an Athletic player.
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"There are times that you have to believe in destiny."