Som l´Espanyol: Iván de la Peña

When you think of him, you don´t think of how long he´s been around, that he was the first heir apparent to Pep Guardiola before Xavi Hernandez or that both Johan Cruyff and Sir Bobby Robson thought of him as a linchpin for their attack at least early on. He was the man who set the ball free for Ronaldo O' Fenomeno to race behind at the Camp Nou. It was the 1996 season and the likes of Stoichkov, Figo and Luis Enrique still ran the grounds at the Camp Nou, but he was the Little Buddha, who was as much the Catalan version to the culés in Barcelona what Raúl Madrid was to los blancos: the hope of their cantera, that he was like them and that he would be as them on the field. Except he was bald They called him Lo Pelat or the shaved one. He was short. He lacked pace and he rarely came back to help in defense. That might have been excused before, with his insightful passes and his vision, but under new coach Louis Van Gaal, the Cantabrian was phased out.

Ivan De La Peña had been Xavi before Xavi became Xavi, and for all intensive purposes at the time, he was better, but instead, an offer of 15 million euros came from Lazio in 1998 and the club accepted. It should have been his time to shine, this was Cragnotti´s and Sven-Goran Ericksson´s aquile, who would challenge for a scudetto but fall behind winners Milan. Instead injury problems hit him even then and his inability to adjust to Italy or Serie A impeded his career. He would spend the next year at Marseille and that didn´t even help, playing alongside Robert Pirés, Christophe Dugarry and Fabrizio Ravanelli.

A year later, his career looked to be turning around again. His old club Barcelona were going to be without Pep Guardiola because of an injured ankle and a young Xavi Hernandez would be gone for two months with the Olympic team in Sydney. It would be his final chance to win over new coach Serra Ferrer and his former club. They had an option to buy out his Lazio contract, but he would fail again to secure his place. He spent 2001 riding the bench at Lazio as his contract expired.

He was 26 years old, without a club and the promise of youth was gone, but RCD Espanyol reclaimed him. They made him partner their Raúl (Tamudo) as he had partnered Real Madrid´s when they were both youngsters in the U-21´s. With him directing traffic, Espanyol would win the Copa del Rey in 2005 against Zaragoza and would come a hair´s breath a year later from winning the UEFA Cup against Sevilla. With two unlikely goals, he would single-handedly defeat his former club in the Barcelona derby two years ago; a year of six titles for the blaugrana and the blanquiazules in last place fighting off relegation; the once and only time that worst had ever defeated first in the Spanish league.

Since then he has suffered two of the worst years of his life. Plagued by leg injuries, muscle pulls and built-up scar tissue, the Espanyol legend has played little and talked seriously about hanging up his boots, frustrated that the body can´t respond to the instinct and the quick-mind that sustained a career as long as his. He may never play again for Espanyol and he might just return to Santander to help his father in the family business, a bar in town, but he will always be my favorite player: Iván de la Peña López.