• Zidane. "Courtois? No one is indisputable"

Alphonse Areola may not know it, but he is united in the history of Real Madrid with Eduardo Teus , a character in Spanish football in the first half of the twentieth century. The two are the only ones with Filipino origins who have dressed the club shirt. Teus was born in the still Spanish Manila of 1896.

He was a field player at the beginning, then a goalkeeper, also a national coach after the Civil War and finally a very influential journalist. So much so that he is credited with part of the responsibility of the greatest goalscorer of whites to Barcelona , that 11-1 of 1943 on the return of a semifinal cupped with political tension.

After losing Real Madrid in the 3-0 leg, the chronicle of Teus in the newspaper Ya had a lot of repercussion in the capital. The reporter had an impact on the environment lived in the countryside and the hard game of the Catalans, to end up asking Chamartín fans to imitate the atmosphere of «boiling casserole» of Les Corts . The call came into effect.

Teus died of a heart attack in 1961 in the press gallery of San Mamés, while writing the chronicle of Athletic-Real Madrid. «Nineteen minutes. The gento boarding school. The pass back. And Tejada nails it », were his last notes, as he remembers the Twitter account @HemerotecaRMCF in a delicious post. Areola always wanted to be a goalkeeper, and thus began in the lower categories of the PSG. Not like Teus, who ended up under sticks overnight, by decision of the Madrid captain in 1915, Santiago Bernabéu. The starting goal lost the post as punishment, after getting confused by the cabarets in Barcelona the night before a game.

Philippines National Team

Areola celebrates one of Madrid's goals for Brujas.OSCAR DEL POZO

Areola was born in Paris, of Filipino parents, and has never forgotten the homeland of his family. In fact, he came to doubt about which team to defend, until the French convinced him. In 2013 he was one of the heroes in the U20 World Cup in Turkey , helping to lift the title by stopping two penalties in the decisive round of the final. The Philippines continued to wait until very recently, because it could not debut with the absolute until September 2018, in the Nations League. As a substitute, he does appear on the list of bleus players who proclaimed themselves world champions months before the World Cup in Russia. His relationship with the Asian archipelago that was Spanish for three centuries is stretched through his wife's family, with which he shares Filipino origins.

Areola will start as headline this afternoon at the Bernabéu against Granada, having not recovered from his stomach problems Thibaut Courtois . It will be his third appearance against the white fan, after leaving a good mark on the previous ones. The goalkeeper promises battle, if the Belgian does not recover his best version. "No one is indisputable," Zinedine Zidane recalled yesterday, happy with the arrival of his countryman, once lost Keylor Navas. Today the former PSG will have to stop the tough Granada and watch the left lane, where white casualties accumulate (Marcelo relapsed from his cervical problems). "Sure, tall with nerve, wingspan ...", Teus could write about Areola today.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Real Madrid
  • Thibaut Courtois
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  • Zinedine Zidane
  • Keylor Navas
  • Marcelo
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