With a pass like this, some would have had their difficulties.

The ball came up and far out of midfield and fell into the sixteen-meter space as if it had fallen out of a helicopter.

There Gerard Moreno fought with his opponent for a bit of freedom of movement, brought the leather to the floor, put it from his right to his left foot and shot from the rotation into the goal.

With the goal, the striker for Villarreal Club de Fútbol had won 1-0 against Valladolid, he provided the template for the 2-0 final score, was once again the decisive man on the pitch, and Villarreal at least had the place in the Europa-Conference-League play-offs again for sure.

But it could get even better if the small club from the Spanish Mediterranean region of Castellón wins the Europa League final in Gdansk against the big Manchester United this Wednesday (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Europa League, with Nitro and DAZN).

Moreno is the most successful striker on the Villarreal team and it's his best season.

He scored 29 times, 23 of which he scored in La Liga, second on the top scorer list behind Leo Messi with 30 goals.

There are also six goals in the Europa League.

At the age of 29, he matured into a top striker quite late, although this season he has strong competition at his side with Paco Alcácer, who has returned to Spain from Dortmund.

Games in the "Stadium of Ceramics"

Spain's national coach Luis Enrique also saw the striker's explosion of performance this season, and Moreno is also in the squad for the European Championship. He is the most successful Spanish goalscorer of the season. Still, Gerard Moreno's career was rocky. In the Catalan football school of CF Damm he was considered an exceptional talent, but in the youth of Espanyol Barcelona they sorted him out again at the age of 15 because they believed that he was physically not up to the contact sport of football.

In these years, the time of the small and skinny in Spanish football began, which later made FC Barcelona so successful. Ten years ago Real Madrid also showed interest, Moreno was now 1.80 meters tall, but he went to Villarreal, played in all the youth teams there, was loaned to Mallorca and has since been sold to Espanyol.

He has been back in Villarreal for three years, although he did not get more than 20 goals in his first two years. In other clubs it might not be spectacular enough, the pressure to succeed is greater. But Villarreal is a small town with 55,000 inhabitants, many of whom work in the traditional local tile industry. The stadium is consequently called the “ceramic stadium” and already looks tiled from the outside.

The main sponsor is a tile manufacturer, and the head of the company is also the association's president and main shareholder. Such models with a financially strong financier who has everything under control often go wrong, as can be seen very close at Valencia CF and its sponsor from Singapore. But Fernando Roig does not interfere in sporting matters. "I have no idea about football," says the President openly, "I'm a manager."

A financier who did not get restless when the club was relegated again after their first promotion to the Primera División in 1998.

With players like Palermo, Riquelme or Senna, the ball-safe stabilizer in Spain's 2008 European championship squad, the club stabilized itself in the midfield of the Spanish league and at the same time built one of the most successful youth departments in Spanish football.

Eleven of the 26 professionals in the squad come from their own youth, the average age is 28 years.

"A lot of people talk about youth work, but we've had eleven Spaniards on the field," said Roig in an interview with former national coach Vicente del Bosque: "We want to grow from below."

Participation in the final is already a great success for the Villarreal Club de Fútbol, ​​but nothing more than another stage goal. But the chairman doesn't even want to talk about big dreams. “Our title is to play in the top division every year, that's difficult enough,” he says. “If we take part in the Champions or Europa League at the end of the day, that's good too.” A win over Manchester United would not be inconvenient for the reluctant football president.