'Strikers are lucky': Bono tastes goalscorer's euphoria to save Sevilla
“Where are you going?” asked Marcos Acuña. Yassine Bono didn’t reply, he just kept on running, but the answer was soon revealed: to save the day. To do what you lot couldn’t do, and my lot rarely get the chance to do, just about the best thing in football. He was off to write a bit of history. From a commentary booth in Barcelona, a former footballer said “Sevilla have tried everything” but they hadn’t tried this. So, while the left-back anxiously watched him pass, 683km away in Valladolid, up in the stands the others shouted at their goalkeeper to get going. A moment or three later, the ball was in the net and he was heading back towards them, an unlikely hero again.
It was the last kick, an equaliser scored on 93min 19secs. Sevilla, 13-3 up in shots, had finally found what they were looking for. “It’s incredible, difficult to describe. I didn’t know how to celebrate,” Bono said, so he just let go. A moment’s thought, enough to register that he didn’t have a yellow card, and he was off, wearing a smile the size of Seville. He tore off his orange goalkeeper shirt to reveal another top the same colour underneath, like a Russian
doll. His team-mates chased as he turned one way and the next, a game of ‘it’ that ended with everyone piling on by the touchline, incredulous looks on their faces. “It’s a lovely feeling,” he said. “Strikers are lucky.”
Bono is not the first goalkeeper to score a goal. He might not even be the only one with a pop star name: someone called Johnny Vegas Fernández got 45 in Peru, after all. He’s not the first Sevilla goalkeeper to score: Andrés Palop famously headed in an injury-time equaliser that rescued them against Shakhtar, eventually sending them on to win the 2007 Uefa Cup. He’s not even the first to score in Spain this season: Eibar’s Marko Dimitrovic scored against Atlético Madrid. Amazingly, he wasn’t even the only one to score in Spain this weekend. And it was only an equaliser at Valladolid. But all that misses the point.
There’s something joyous about what he did, what they all did, even beyond the drama: something both subversive and silly, guaranteed to raise a smile. And never dismiss that: it’s easily forgotten, but football is supposed to be fun, made up of moments, not objectives. Like a dog on the pitch, someone scoring from their own half,
or not scoring an inch from the line, oh Abreu; like a referee falling over and an outfield player going in nets, there’s something brilliant about a goalkeeper getting a goal. It’s the best thing in football, even better than the real thing, beaten only by an outfield player in goal and a goalkeeper up front at the same time, like when Lucas Ocampos made a late save from Dimitrovic last season, stopping the man he had beaten earlier in the game from beating him back.
And, yes, that is Sevilla’s Lucas Ocampos, one of the men in the delirious pack chasing after Bono on Saturday night. This was historic, emulating Palop making it seem even more significant while those coincidences made it crazier. Bono scored the day after it was revealed that Dimitrovic is leaving Eibar for ... Sevilla. He also scored the day before Dani Rebollo scored a 92nd-minute equaliser that ended up earning rivals Real Betis’s B team a promotion at the expense of ... Sevilla B.
Besides, this was also different from the rest, unique. Only eight goalkeepers have ever scored in La Liga. There have only been fourteen goals. Nacho González scored six for Las Palmas, Carlos Fenoy five for Celta, and Toni Prats two for Betis. Juan José Santamaría
got one for Racing Santander, one of José Luis Chilavert’s 59 was for Zaragoza, and Dimitrovic scored one from the spot but might not get another chance because he missed one from there too, Cádiz’s Conan Ledesma making a sensational save. All of those goals were from dead balls according to Spain’s best footballing statistician: 14 penalties, two free-kicks, and one rebound from a penalty. Only two men have ever scored from open play, and you could argue only Bono really has given that the other was Dani Aranzubía with a header directly from a corner for Athletic a decade ago.
This took a little longer. So much so that at one point – and this might well be the best part of the whole thing – Bono was just about to give up and run back again. It was also more of a laugh, the commentator on one radio station just cracking up when the ball hit the net. “Yeah, it was a training ground routine,” the Sevilla coach Julen Lopetegui joked afterwards. Valladolid’s manager Sergio González, sighing that this was the only thing that hadn’t happened to them yet this season, had a better word for it. A brilliant word in fact, one that even sounds like the goal looked: rocambolesca. What had happened was, he said, far-fetched, barely believable, a chain of events each more unlikely than the last. “A strange play,” in Bono’s own words.
What had happened was this: A move that started with Bono neatly stepping past an opponent to play a pass by his own penalty area ended with Lucas Ocampos winning a corner at the other end with the clock on 92 min 55 sec . Suso went to take it, a voice from a member of staff – not from the football department – shouted to wait: Bono, looking to the bench, was waved on his way. The ball was sent to the far post where Luuk De Jong rose and headed back across goal. Óscar Rodríguez tried to turn the ball in but scuffed it, leaving it dribbling apologetically out of play. That at least is what the Valladolid defenders Jawad El Yamiq and Saidy Janko thought; it is what goalkeeper Roberto Jiménez thought too, three of them stepping back to get out the way and let it go.
Inside the area, Bono imagined so too, pausing for a split second, taking half a step back towards his unguarded goal. Something, though, made him stay. Seemingly in slow motion, instead of going out, the ball hit the outside of the post and stayed in. On the byline, Youssef En-Nesyri reached out a toe and put it back into play, through the legs of El Yamiq and Sergi Guardiola. And there, just outside the six-yard box, Jules Koundé nudged it to Bono and leapt as high into the air as he could.
Left-footed, first time, the goalkeeper struck it under his jumping teammate and into the net. Twenty-four seconds, six touches from six men and Sevilla were level, their hold on a Champions League place secure, as if that was the point. “Madness,” Frédéric Kanouté called it, asking Palop if it reminded him of anyone.
Afterwards, someone sidled up to the goalkeeper and said, with a smile: “Do you think could you could show the others how it’s done?” “It wasn’t just a goal, it was a golazo,” Lopetegui insisted.
Symbolic, too. If there is an unexpected hero, it is him. Born in Canada, where his dad was a university lecturer, signed by Atlético nine years ago and loaned to Zaragoza for two years in the second division, Bono was recruited in a hurry, joining Sevilla as a last-minute replacement for Sergio Rico. The Moroccan had come up and gone down again with Girona, and arrived on loan with no plans for him to be anything other than backup for Tomas Vaclik, until the Czech’s injury changed everything.
Well, eventually. On a February night at the Sánchez Pizjuán that saw a hanky-wave, that classic symbol of discontent, Bono let in a soft goal in the 87th minute. Sevilla were out the Europa League, beaten 1-0 and eliminated by Cluj and his time looked over almost as soon as it had begun, or so it goes. But the VAR had spotted a handball, a miracle for the club that have some mystical relationship with the competition, and Sevilla were rescued. As for Bono, he was handed a reprieve, redemption following.
He saved a penalty against Wolves, was a giant before Romelu Lukaku, and ended the season a Europa League winner, voted the best goalkeeper in the competition. His move was made permanent, and at a reduced price. Where there had been nerves when he played, now there are nerves when he doesn’t, a man on a mission to quietly rescue his team. He saved a penalty against Betis in the derby, another in the last minute to secure a win over Alavés and even stopped Erling Haaland from the spot, momentarily. Now this: a moment of fun, forever.
Bono’s teammates had gone by the time he had finished on the phone on Saturday night, trying to explain on the radio how he felt, and forced to get a lift back to the hotel with physios and staff. He hadn’t showered, it was late and it was cold but the smile was going nowhere, unlike him when that call came, running past Acuña and into history. “I’m grateful to have experienced this,” he said, speaking for almost everyone.