Mari Carmen was 78 and late. It was a January morning in Pamplona, cold and wet, and the taxi that was supposed to take her to hospital hadn’t turned up. Standing in the street watching time and traffic pass but no cabs, she was getting a bit worried when she saw a young man she thought she recognised. She, after all, is an Osasuna supporter and he is their striker. Although, like her, he wasn’t having the best of times back then; he was halfway through the season, well into the winter, and had scored just once, when she approached. “Excuse me,” Mari Carmen said. “Are you Ante Budimir? Could you do me a favour? Could you take me to the hospital?”
So he did, and there was the selfie to prove it. Mari Carmen knew her family would never believe her but, originally from tiny Carcastillo 50 miles south, recently widowed and having moved to the capital for health reasons, a tumour returning, that was definitely her in the front seat and that was definitely him alongside her. The picture eventually appeared weeks later when her daughter Myriam posted a cartoon strip to thank the many people who had helped her mum over a couple of difficult, lonely months, in which it felt like everything was going wrong at once. “Good on Osasuna for signing people before stars,” she wrote.
