The historic, cathartic and biggest night of Taty Castellanos’s curious career

R edemption is rapid round here. In the darkness of the bench, hidden a little but not enough, Taty Castellanos hung his head. A couple of minutes earlier, the Girona striker had been clean through at the Camp Nou, not just one on one but two on one. This was their moment to beat Barcelona for the first time, his moment, but instead of roll the ball into teammate Viktor Tsygankov or bend it into the net, he sent a shot wide. Withdrawn swiftly after, half an hour before the end, he sat and sobbed and didn’t stop. Some time later, his coach said: he’s still in the dressing room, crying.

That was 10 April; this was 25 April. Castellanos couldn’t sleep then and he couldn’t sleep now, still awake at 4am and forced to take a pill, but it was different. Fifteen days later and 101km north, Castellanos was taken off early again. This time he was smiling, leaving to a standing ovation, Estadi Montilivi going as mad as he said his mobile was. What he had done – and this line is no longer the empty cliché it once was – had gone round the world. “Crazy,” he called it. “I never imagined this.” Nor did anyone else. What he had done no one had done in 75 years.

“When I scored the first, lots of things went through my head: family, friends, my mum,” Castellanos said. “And then the goals kept coming and I thought: ‘It’s my night.’” By the end of it, he was holding the match ball, having scored four times to lead Girona to a 4-2 victory over Real Madrid. As he stood at the side of the pitch, trying to make himself heard over the most maddeningly-catchy club anthem in Spain (which will accompany you all day now if you’re daft enough to click here), he was beaming. “This is a dream night,” he said. “Now to enjoy it with all the people who