Osasuna’s Chimy Ávila: ‘In Argentina, it’s easier to pick up a gun than a ball’

“I wouldn’t call it pressure now: I love it.” Chimy Ávila, the Osasuna striker and human wrecking ball whose astonishing story is written all over his body, unfiltered and funny despite the sacrifice and suffering, pictures himself on the penalty spot. He sees Seville, the Copa del Rey final against Real Madrid, one shot to deliver his club’s first ever trophy. And, inevitably, he sees Empalme Graneros in Argentina, where he took so many, already playing for a living long before becoming pro. “It’s harder in the hood,” he says. On Saturday night Thibaut Courtois won’t be carrying a gun, for a start.

One of nine children, Ávila grew up in north-east Rosario in a neighbourhood where, he says, you never knew when the bullets would fly, gangs fought and he, too, went armed. His home had a tin roof that leaked when it rained and flew when it was windy, but also had a pitch just outside the door. “I would do anything for my daughter to go and play barefooted where I did, to come back with a muddy face, walk those dirty streets,” he says, and yet if there’s fondness there was a fear that forged him, too. You want pressure? Out there, where clandestine games were staged, scoring was survival. “This is different,” Ávila says. “This is a challenge, a nice one against the world’s best goalkeeper. Back then it could be against a goalkeeper with a gun around his neck.

“All these big clubs have academies; mine was Empalme. I look back even just seven or eight years and I didn’t expect to be here, playing this final. I expected to be taking a penalty at four o’clock in the morning so my family could eat. You would go out at night and there would be games for money. One on ones, penalties, bets placed. ‘Play: 100.’ People turn up: