Inaki Williams and the road back to Ghana as younger brother Nico bangs on Spain door

It had already been quite a week for the Williams brothers even before they checked in with their senior international squads and introduced themselves to new teammates. Inaki and Nico Williams seldom go anywhere on duty without matching tracksuits, but as they wished each other luck last Sunday, ahead of their landmark call-ups, they were heading in different directions.

Before that, they celebrated another very special first for the family. They shared a pitch, as they had 42 times before in Athletic Bilbao’s first team. They both scored goals, as they never had in the same match, in the 3-2 victory over Rayo Vallecano, similar goals that came from fine long passes designed to exploit the pace of Athletic’s fastest fraternity. Inaki’s opener was perhaps the more stylish, given the deft cushioning of the ball that brought it under his control while moving at speed, but the younger Williams, Nico, took his strike nicely, true to the family style, 20 minutes later.

Inaki and Nico were born eight years apart, to parents, Maria and Felix, who had suffered to provide what they hoped would be a better life for their first-born son and any children that might follow. While Maria, who is from Ghana, was carrying Inaki, she and her husband left West Africa to head for Europe. They travelled by truck and by foot, an arduous, perilous journey. They climbed the border fence that separates Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Melilla. They were arrested. They needed to be resourceful. They told border officials they were feeling conflict in Liberia.

They were granted asylum in Spain, and pitched up in Bilbao, an almost arbitrary choice but one with huge, happy consequences for their active eldest son. Inaki was born there, in the