‘My parents crossed the Sahara barefoot to get to Spain’: Record-breaker Inaki Williams

"We were at home one day in Bilbao watching the television when something came on – I can’t remember exactly what – and I asked her again," explained Inaki Williams in an emotional interview with The Guardian.

"My mum turned it off and said: ‘OK. The moment’s come for me to tell you.

"Sit down, I think you’re ready to hear the story of papa and me now.

"When she told me I was left cold. Hearing that leaves a deep impression. Wow. It’s like something in a film and my parents lived it."

The 27-year-old was recently in the news for going six seasons without missing a single game for Athletic Bilbao. He attributes his strengths to his parents, who overcame extreme hardship to give him a good life.

Williams continued: "You’d watch the news and see boats arriving from Africa, people climbing the fence [into Melilla] and I realised I didn’t really know how we got to Spain.

"It’s something I always asked but my mum avoided it because I was just a kid. And maybe she then thought if she’d told me when I started at Athletic at 18 it would have been a weight on my back.

"I knew my life was different to my friends’ and I could imagine, but when you hear the details.

"Details like: I didn’t know they had crossed the desert by foot. I knew my dad had problems with the soles of his feet but not that it was because he had walked barefooted across the Sahara sand at 40, 50 degrees.

"They did part in a truck, one of those with the open back, 40 people packed in, then walked days.

"People fell, left along the way, people they buried. It’s dangerous: there are thieves waiting, rapes, suffering. Some are tricked into it.

"Traffickers get paid and then halfway say: ‘The journey ends here.’

"Chuck you out, leave you with nothing: no water, no food. Kids, old people, women. People go not knowing what’s ahead, if they’ll make it. My mum said: ‘If I knew, I would have stayed.’ She was pregnant with me but didn’t know."

His parents were arrested as well but finally made their way to Bilbao, where the forward has made a name for himself.

"Hearing my parents’ story makes you want to fight even harder to give back everything they sacrificed for us.

"I couldn’t ever repay them – they risked their lives – but the life I try to give them is the one they dreamed of giving us. And, in some way, we can say: ‘We’ve done it.’"

All of his parents' sacrifices have paid off, with Williams now a record-breaking player in La Liga - the top tier of Spanish football. It truly doesn't get better than that.

Source: The Guardian