Oli McBurnie and Scott McKenna have landed on their feet in the Canary Islands. “Well, how could they not?” asked their Las Palmas captain, Kirian Rodríguez, on Thursday night. “They’re 6ft 3in and have size 12 feet.” Not even Real Madrid, this Real Madrid, could knock them down. So much for Kylian Mbappé, whose arrival from Paris Saint-Germain was seven years in the making and dominates everything; it was the men signed from Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest who shone more here, departing to a standing ovation, embracing new teammates who are so glad they came.
McBurnie wasn’t even four minutes into his third game for Las Palmas when he cut inside, easing away from Antonio Rüdiger and set up Alberto Moleiro to put them into the lead against the Spanish and European champions. McKenna stood firm as the galaxy came back at them, Madrid only finding a way through with a second-half penalty. The Las Palmas coach, Luis Carrión, insisted his team could have got even more than the 1-1 draw their fans celebrated, so dominant had they been in the first half particularly. “One point doesn’t taste like much,” Moleiro admitted.
Moleiro’s goal had been superbly taken, dashing beyond Aurélien Tchouaméni and Éder Militão and beating Thibaut Courtois to finish a 14-pass move that finally opened up with McBurnie’s touch and eye. “My brother Alberto Moleiro is too good,” McBurnie tweeted after, in Spanish. “I’m tired. Let’s go.”
His teammates feel much the same about him and McKenna. Put simply, Carrion says, they’re both very good.
McBurnie, with his socks around his ankles, commentators seemingly obsessed with his red face in the Canarian heat, the idea that he could have be another holidaymaker picked off one of the island’s beaches, joked that he had bought four bottles of aftersun almost as soon as he landed, and has it all to be a cult hero. But this goes deeper; this was a genuinely superb performance, almost untouchable, an exercise in making others play. As one Canary Island reporter put it: “How badly we needed a McBurnie in our lives. The goals will come, or not, but it’s incredible how many balls he brings down; over and over again until he’e empty.”
And there he was just casually dropping off the perfect assist, against Madrid. Open your phone, click on whichever score app you use and there it is in match ratings: McBurnie better than Mbappé.
“He did a great job,” Carrion said. “He gave us continuity almost every time he received with his back to goal. That drew the opponents in and gave us space wide.” The striker Sandro Ramírez said: “I had seen him before, I watch a lot of football, and I like him. The breathing room, the release, the outlet that he gives us is spectacular. We’re a team that’s made to have the ball, to combine, but he gives us so much, and we hope it can carry on like this.”
Nor was it just one night; it is every morning, too. “Apart from Sandro, who gets there at 6am, they’re the first into the gym every day,” Rodríguez said post-match.
Three games into the La Liga season, no one has more assists that McBurnie, on two. That’s as many as Mbappé, Vinícius Júnior, Rodrygo and Jude Bellingham put together. It is early, sure, and most of the focus was, as ever, on what Madrid are doing wrong rather than how well their opponents had played. But this has been some start, one that says something about the way the two Scots have approached their move to Spain. And at Las Palmas, they couldn’t be happier that they chose the Canaries.
“I am sure that Scott, with the profile he has, the seasons he has played, would have had offers from the Premier League that were more interesting than coming here to Gran Canaria, on the other side of the world so to speak, and suffer the heat,” Rodríguez said. “That first week, he said: ‘Let me get used to the heat.’ But they came with the idea to help, to contribute; they came with desire, commitment, and a smile every day.
“McBurnie kills himself out there; he’s our very own little Conor McGregor – he gives everything. He’s been spectacular. From the start day he was coming over, asking: ‘Como se dice …?’ [how do you say …?]. And you’re like: ‘What do you mean, como se dice…?! You’re already asking in Spanish and you haven’t even been here a week.’ That shows you the commitment they both have, the desire they had to come here.”
