When Fuenlabrada’s bus rolls through the gates into the Santiago Bernabéu on Tuesday night, there will be an Englishman on board. In early July Conor O’Keefe, a 22-year-old goalkeeper and university student from Macclesfield, boarded a plane, hired a car and flew to Spain armed with nothing but a gigantic spreadsheet and Google Maps. There, he knocked on the door of every club within an hour radius until the third-division leaders invited him in; two months later, the Copa del Rey draw paired them with Real Madrid. And although he will not play, this is his team now – 48 clubs and hundreds of golden envelopes later.
“I rang my dad: ‘We’re going to Real Madrid,’” he says. Richard O’Keefe knew how long his son’s journey had been and how much further it still has to run: from Crewe to Macclesfield and a season spent travelling the north-west, turning out for nine different teams, a kind of supply goalkeeper always on call; from turning down a youth contract, instead playing as a two‑year “triallist” because it was the only way they would let him sit A-levels, to chasing clubs and agents; from joining Olympic high-jumpers and a former Rada-trained actor turned athletics coach named Fuzz Caan, to the home of Ronaldo, Bale and Benzema.
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