By Dominic Conrad August 22, 2020
Yesterday’s Europa League Final win meant a bit more for club captain Jesus Navas than it did for all else.
You see, Navas started his footballing career at his boyhood club, rising through the ranks to the first team. The World Cup, Premier League, and three-time Europa League winner was born in Los Palacios y Villafranca, a city just a short 20 minutes from Sevilla. Jesus’ footballing career really first started at the age of 13 when he started playing for the Los Palacios Youth Academy. It was from here where he would get his big move to Sevilla F.C. just two short years later. By the time he turned 17 he was promoted to Sevilla B and two days after his 18th birthday, he made his first team debut. In the following season he was officially promoted to the first team. He then won his first Europa League with the club the next season at 20, and his second at 21. But it was just three months after the second European triumph he would carry the coffin of his close friend and teammate who rose through the ranks with him: Antonio Puerta. Antonio suffered an unfortunate heart attack in the first league match of the 2007/08 season due to an incurable, hereditary heart disease. Navas and Puerta first played together for the Sevilla B squad in 2002 and 2003 before being reunited in the first team. The two would form a very close friendship in those years playing for Sevilla B. The club of course wanted to retire his number 16, but the Spanish Football Federation wouldn’t allow due to league regulations, so the number was left vacant in the first team until 2017; when Jesus Navas returned to Sevilla from Manchester City to take his late friend’s number.
Sadly, this isn’t the end of the heartache for Jesus Navas and so many close to Sevilla when it comes to the emotional knot tied to the club’s most recent Europa League title. Another player Navas grew up with in the Sevilla system, José Antonio Reyes, tragically passed away last summer in a car crash. Reyes famously played for Arsenal after his first spell at Sevilla and would make a legendary return to the club to captain them to an incredible three Europa League titles in a row in 2014, 2015, and 2016.
So of course with the memories of his good friends and teammates in his mind, and his heart, Jesus Navas couldn’t help but shed tears when lifting his boyhood club’s sixth Europa League. But his friends were with him throughout the competition and the hard fought final, with Puerta’s number on his back and the captain’s band on his arm that Reyes wore in the very same competition just a few years before.
The words from the Sevilla F.C. anthem “here we are with you Sevilla”, sung by the supporters of the club reign forever true. Sevilla F.C. is forever there with you, Jesus. All of it.
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