When the ball came to Iñaki Williams and he spun, turning it sharply around Sergi Gómez and into the centre circle, a single thought and word occurred to everyone inside San Mamés, Iñaki included: Run! And so he ran. He ran like no one they’d ever seen run before: faster and faster until somehow, eight seconds later and 70 metres away, he was standing before them roaring, and Athletic were 2-0 up with five minutes left, Sevilla beaten. All around they went wild, as breathless as he was.

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Few expected this. Sevilla were title contenders, Athletic fighting to avoid a first-ever relegation, desperation gripping. They knew Williams was fast, but they didn’t expect him to move quite like that, still less anticipate the finish, the precision with the pace. Athletic were desperate for goals, but they weren’t getting them: only Valencia and Huesca had fewer. Aritz Aduriz was out, Raúl García too. They needed Williams badly but they sometimes feared goals weren’t really his thing, not here. Goals like this are not really anybody’s thing.

Not so long ago, a small boy had waited hours to meet the Athletic striker in the team hotel. “I bet you score loads of goals,” Williams said, crouching down, arm around the boy’s shoulder, adding: “more than me.” His league totals for the past four seasons read: one, eight, five, seven. Coming into Sunday’s match against Sevilla, he had five. He was playing his 100th consecutive game for Athletic – a feat no player had matched at any club in 25 years – but still no one at San Mamés had seen him score there for over two years. On Sunday, at last, they did. Twice.

Williams’s last 15 league goals had come away from home, the latest at Vigo on Monday; it had been 770 days and 41 games since his last home goal. With every passing week, it got more bizarre, but the way he broke it was brilliant. First, with 22 minutes gone, he dashed up the left, cut inside, and crashed in a 20-yard shot that almost took the net with it. Then, with 84 gone, he did something better. When the ball came to him 15 metres or so inside his own half, Athletic led 1-0 but they were hanging on. Quincy Promes had bent one just wide and the nerves had taken over. It was played out towards Williams again. All game, he had fought, alone, and he was spent. But he spun, and then he started to shift. And then vooooooosh, he was gone.

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Inaki Williams has done it again! 😍



Shows strength and pace and he gets his reward! What a terrific game he’s had 🔥 pic.twitter.com/h5PwhcvIuc

Afterwards, it was likened to Ronaldo, but this was different. Jorge Valdano once said that when the Brazilian attacked, it was like the whole herd attacked: a one-man stampede. This was smoother, more graceful, more continuous, and genuinely exhilarating. It was strangely collective too, as if another thousand people stood and ran too, an entire ground shouting go-go-go before the realisation that, bloody hell, he’s going to get there. He began behind Gómez, but was soon ahead, speeding between two men, the acceleration astonishing, until there he was flying past the goalkeeper, the ball in the net.

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The TV claimed he had run 62.3 metres. He reached 38.8km/h, they said. Which might not have been that scientific – the morning’s papers were talking 57 metres and a peak of 34.5km/h – but whatever it was, it was fast. It is hard to recall a run like it; impossible, in fact. Add in everything that went with it, the emotion, the significance, the timing, and very few goals have carried you along like this.

Eventually, his teammates reached him. There’s something in this photo that explains everything: Williams, tongue between his teeth, chest out, screaming. Iker Muniain on his back, screaming. Dani García to his left, screaming. Ibai Gómez to his right, the new arrival from Alavés, the one man not subjected to the mounting pressure, gazing at him wearing a smile that says wow.

The Spanish Football Podcast (@tsf_podcast) What a photo https://t.co/RH2gFGFou7

“Williams pulls on his superhero’s cloak,” Marca read. “Williams, unchained,” said AS. El País called it a work of art. He was “a lightning bolt,” “a bullet”, “a rocket,” a “panther”, a “gazelle”. “All we can do is surrender to a great player,” said the Sevilla coach Pablo Machín. “He beat us in the air, on the floor, and for pace.”

“He’s a sprinter, he needs space, and he has more away from home,” manager Gaizka Garitano said. “A striker lives off goals and you see when he’s more confident. He scored two goals of great quality and it’s good for him to take that ‘rucksack’ off his back.” It was good for all of them: as they stood there, celebrating the second, victory secure, and Athletic climbed to 15th. For the first time in a year they’ve won two in a row: that’s five weeks unbeaten now, 11 points from 15 under Garitano, as many as they picked up from the previous 42 possible with Eduardo Berizzo. They have a three-point cushion over relegation; they’re also – get this – just six points off a European place. No wonder there was release as well as joy. They’d all suffered.

Williams especially. “I felt like crying,” he admitted afterwards. “When things go badly, it’s like you’re no use for anything. When you score, everyone pats you on the back; when you don’t, no one says a word to you. But faith moves mountains and I fought for that ball as if it was the last. I worked like a devil. I feel like I’ve taken a weight off my shoulders. Today was incredible.”

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He wasn’t going to hide. He was, though, going to run. Very, very fast.

Talking points

• It was only a penalty but Valencia managed to turn it into a piece of performance art, a moving portrait of their season. It was 0-0 against Real Valladolid, Valencia had won just four times all season, drawing 10 of their 18 games, and they desperately needed a win when they were presented with the chance to take a vital lead. Rodrigo Moreno, the striker who has scored just once since the opening day, had decided thatthought penalties might offer him a way back, so he had spent the week practicsing them. Now that they got one, he asked Dani Parejo to let him taken it instead. Parejo, scorer of 18 out of 22 from the spot in the league, let him. Over on the bench, Marcelino García Toral, rubbed his eyes, barely able to watch as Rodrigo ran up and … produced just about the weakest shot you could imagine, the ball rebounding back to Santi Mina, who somehow put it wide, their entire year distilled in daftness. Eventually, Parejo did get a goal, running off waving his arms about wildly, and dashing to the bench to embrace the under-pressure manager, but thatit was not enough. They’d escaped, but only momentarily; for Valencia, there’s always a way back in to the labyrinth and with their only shot of the whole game Valladolid got an equaliser, thanks to an extraordinary free kick from Alcaraz. “This is the point we have leas deserved this season,” Sergio admitted, and yet impossible though it seemed, it was also somehow inevitable. Valencia had miss after miss and ended where they always do: with a draw. No one in Spain has a worse goals-per-shot ratio than them; no one has scored fewer, and no one can understand it. “This isn’t the first time. Or the second, or the third, or the fourth. Or even the fifth,” Marcelino said. “We get smacked in the face every time,” Marcelino said.

• “He’ll reach 500 too,” Ernesto Valverde said after Leo Messi scored his 400th league goal. So maybe we’ll talk about him then, then.

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Messi has scored his 400th goal in LaLiga!!



Lionel Messi = 🐐 pic.twitter.com/i9j0n5NDNv

• Cristiano Ronaldo called him “mini me”, his shirt calls him RDT, and his fans are calling him their saviour. Raúl De Tomás scored a sensational hat-trick on Friday as Rayo Vallecano won their third game in a row. Not that they’re out of the relegation zone yet, mind. The battle at the bottom has become quite something. Genuinely, there are 10 teams that could be dragged into it yet.

• A penalty. Jan Oblak. Antoine Greizmann. 1-0. Stop here if you’ve heard this one before.

• “Unfortunately, it went in,” Dani Ceballos mumbled after his late free kick somehow gave Real Madrid a 2-1 victory over his former club Real Betis laston Sunday night. It was about the only time Madrid touched the ball in the second half, and it ended in the back of the net, Ceballos’s hands up in apology as all-around him his “home” whistled him.

• Two days later, and this column still hasn’t worked out what actually happened in the final 50 seconds or so in Villarreal, where the Yellow Submarine missed four chances and then Toko Ekambi missed a penalty against Getafe.

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Toto Ekambi with an early contender for worst penalty of year.



92nd minute, with Villarreal a goal down... 😧#LaLiga pic.twitter.com/pHRkdKN7K9

• What a weekend for goals, by the way. Not just Williams, but RDT, Daniel Parejo, Cristhian Stuani, Jorge Molina, Ángel, and Luis Suárez. Woof. Pick that lot out!

• But the best goal of all, five days after Nick Blackman scored for Sporting against Valencia, came from Spanish football’s only other Englishman. Get in, Charlie I’Anson!