"Gabri Veiga’s Cinderella story: from a pumpkin patch to Celta Vigo colossus", by Sid Lowe

 (Reblogged from The Guardian).

Iago Aspas has single-handedly carried Celta on his back for too long. The striker and the club have found a young successor

In the land of Iago Aspas, maybe one day Gabri Veiga will write his own story. Still only 20 and a journalism student, it started with him kicking a pumpkin around his uncle’s place in the Galician countryside. Where it goes, who knows yet, but it’s going to be somewhere good: named the best player in La Liga for February, a likely call-up for Spain this Friday, and scorer of eight (mostly absurd) goals this season.

The one against Betis was ridiculous and some even have dared claim the Celta Vigo midfielder will end up like Aspas, his captain. Only, Veiga insists, there’s no one like him – and he knows, he’s seen it.

Born in O Porriño, Pontevedra province, Veiga was six on the day Aspas made his debut for Celta, the team they both supported a generation apart. He watched him rescue them from sliding into the third tier. Aspas left the same year Veiga arrived, aged 11, and saw the forward come back again, just happy to be home. Veiga saw him score more La Liga goals than any other Spaniard, in four seasons. Now he’s seeing it from up close.

The first time Veiga played for Celta’s first team in a 2-1 win against Valencia in September 2020, Aspas scored twice. The last time, in a 3-0 win over Rayo on Saturday, he saw Aspas score twice more. . “Iago is the best player in the club’s history,” Veiga says.

After the game, it was suggested to the Celta captain that one day the ground may be named after him. It won’t happen; let’s face it – it’s far more likely to be a bookies or a bank – but it would be right. Aspas is closing in on 200 goals for Celta, more than anyone else, and he has become probably the single most important player in Spain for his team,.

Aspas was, it sometimes seemed, their one, all, and everything, single-handedly saving them. Alone no more, he was also asked about Veiga, the kid emerging as his successor. “I hope he can be here with us for many years, so that we can enjoy him,” Aspas said.

This is where the word of warning always goes; the small print, the bit where you’re reminded that the value of your investment – emotional, financial – can go up as well as down. So many players were going to be big, built up before their time and beyond their means or found circumstance conspiring against them. Being the new someone too often means not being yourself, weighed down by someone else’s expectations. As Bojan Krkic rightly puts it, his career was not without his success, it just wasn’t Messi’s.

Before Barcelona took it mainstream, Real Madrid had a palanca of their own. Lots of people lost their minds over a kid called Miguel, who made his debut in the clásico, only to play two more games. Even Ansu Fati, touched by something intangible, looks oddly mortal now.

And yet, and yet. Previously unmoved by the ball, there was something about the pumpkin that drew him in, Veiga admits. That’s how it began. Although he didn’t stand out especially at youth level, he was the player that most caught the eye in an extremely talented Celta B team, and after that first-team debut in 2020, he made a handful of appearances.

This season, Veiga has become virtually ever-present. He has needed to be: Brais Méndez was sold to Real Sociedad last summer, Santi Mina was moved on and Denis Suárez was frozen out over his refusal to ditch his agents, who had taken one of Celta’s youth prospects to Madrid, with Aspas saying even then that the squad was short.

Veiga has been extraordinary, the comparisons inevitable. His eruption, says the club’s academy director, is “even greater than Iago’s”. His calling is to be the substitute to Aspas,” says Hugo Mallo, who made his 300th appearance on Saturday and, you may remember, is not just a teammate but a member of the Iago Aspas Supporters Club. Veiga has said he would love to follow in the path of those two men, but inevitably, suitors have surfaced. “He’s like me: he’s from here, he has family here,” Aspas says. “I left and it didn’t work. He has desire, enthusiasm, quality. He’s comfortable here and hope he stays for a long time. If he has to go, let it be leaving behind many millions.”

Carlos Carvalhal, the coach, said: “He has been a surprise. I have seen very few players like him in my career.” And he’s been at Sheffield Wednesday.

Celta have improved dramatically under Carvalhal: from three wins and eight defeats in 13 games to five wins and two defeats in the 12 since he took over. In the relegation zone when he took over, they now sit 11th, five points and seven places clear. They’ve lost one in seven – 1-0 against Atlético – and in that time have scored four against Betis, three against Valladolid and Rayo.

Defensively they have tightened up, no goals conceded in 334 minutes, the structure has improved and the attitude has too. “We’re going to have to squeeze one bollock next to the other,” Aspas said, which they did, figuratively at least.

It has been collective, but Veiga has been at the heart of the improvement, scoring two against Betis and Valladolid, taking him to eight goals. No one in the squad has more than two, except Aspas. Among La Liga’s Spaniards, only Joselu, Borja Iglesias, Aspas and Álvaro Morata have more. Four of those five were in the youth system at Celta. The only one of the five who is not a forward is Veiga.

He is not the stereotypical Spanish midfielder. Strong and athletic, technically impressive, his position better defined under Carvalhal, Veiga is playing a little deeper than he was, from where he can spring at opponents. From where, too, he can provide: there are three assists to go with the goals.

“He doesn’t have that profile of touch or precision, but he knows how to play. He’s intelligent, very strong, and he can get into area to finish,” Rayo’s manager, Andoni Iraola, said before Saturday’s game. “He carries the ball, cleans players out and does a lot of damage”.

Within 34 seconds, Veiga had done exactly that. Named La Liga’s best player for February, he had barely put the award down when he set off from the halfway line, pulling away from Rayo’s players, a touch of Gazza about him. Reaching the area, he provided the perfect pass for Aspas.

There was something of the importance of timing in that. The timing on the pitch, but also the moment when he has become a key part of the team, accompanying Aspas. It can feel like a pity they will probably have only a couple of years together, but at other stages of Aspas’s career maybe it would have been a harder fit. Now, aged 35 and 20 respectively, it feels perfect, the transition smoothed, some of the load shared.

Aspas came into the game without a goal in five weeks and missed that chance, when he should have scored. Veiga almost scored another with a neat curler that was pushed away from the near post. Four minutes had gone and the 20-year-old was striding across the game, like a Celtic colossus.

Yet when it came to it, like so many other times, the giant was Aspas. He swept in Celta’s first, struck again on 51 minutes and then completed the scoring with a glorious third at the end, lifting the ball over Rayo’s Stole Dimitrievski from a tight angle.

In the week when the Spain squad is named, it a timely reminder, a reassertion of Aspas’s status. It took him to double figures for the eighth consecutive season. It also took Celta to what looks like safety and that’s no minor thing: they have been a first division team for a decade, his decade, which only eight other clubs can say. “Aspas guides the ship to shore,” wrote Faro de Vigo. “Celta hit terra firma after months of torturous sailing.”

Aspas is, Faro de Vigo said, “magic,” a man whose “talent is inversely proportionate to the recognition he gets beyond Piornedo [on the Galician border].” AS declared: “Aspas is Captain Lightning.” “A genius,” Marca called him, insisting: “that Aspas is a genius, one of the best players in the league, seems obvious but you have to say it more because we have been unjust to the man from Moaña.”

‘“He is the best player I have had the pleasure of coaching,” added Carvalhal. “When you have a player like Aspas, it makes everything easier.”

Fifteen years his junior, Veiga said that one day he would tell his children he played with Aspas. Aspas needn’t do the same: his kids can see that for themselves.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.