Like all the best stories, this one starts in the pub, and the man telling it has a glint in his eye and a grin on his face, the words flying out at a million miles an hour. “I never stop talking,” Brandon Thomas says, and he’s not wrong. “I consider myself a bloke with personality, an extrovert,” he says, and he’s not wrong there either. The Osasuna forward is talking about pretty much everything really, falling about laughing most of the time. Right now, he’s in the buildup to a big game, excitement, nerves, second-guessing the team, how it will go. “And if things go well, magic,” he says, “if not, keep on and on.” It could be his motto.

The manager, Jagoba Arrasate, doesn’t tell them who is playing until the morning of the match, he says, but sometimes the players can “smell” it, though he admits: “You’re guessing really.” Brandon had a feeling he might play against Barcelona, which he did – and within eight minutes he had made the opening goal. He started against Real Madrid too, which he didn’t expect. And he played against his former club Mallorca. He doesn’t know whether he will start against Atlético Madrid on Saturday, but if he does, it will be as close as you can get to two Englishmen facing each other in La Liga: Trippier versus Thomas.

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Yet while the 24-year-old talks pints, beans and sausages, Chelsea and the “hooligan” in him, about how he “loves” the “directness of the Premier League” and would like to play there one day, he’s a curious kind of Englishman. He doesn’t speak any English, for a start – and in Spanish, “hooligan” doesn’t mean hooligan, just a barmy fan, a bit nuts. He never lived in England and never played for an English club. And when he mentions tea, it’s to say he doesn’t drink it. The name is English but the passport is Spanish.

Explaining how it happened, how he got here, means heading to the most English place of all. “My dad’s from London, my mum’s from Granada,” he says. “And they met in Mallorca. My dad’s family had gone years ago to set up an English pub.”

The Thomas family don’t have it any more – “a pity, I’d like to go,” Brandon laughs – and he can’t remember what it was called, but something had started. “My grandparents had this pub, years ago. I never knew it. They worked in restaurants, hotels, then went back. My dad went young, grew up there, worked hard, long hours. He was a waiter, then a ‘relaciones públicas’. You know those blokes that stand outside discos and restaurants [handing out fliers]? One of those. A pain, basically. They had a restaurant too, although they’ve not had it for six or seven years. Typical English food for tourists: it was in the south, where the beaches are, a nice place.”

Brandon was born in Santanyí in the south of the island in February 1995, one of four siblings, and the way he recalls it there was no English at home. “My dad speaks Andalucían Spanish,” he says. “And my English grandparents only really came [back] out a couple of times. My dad was a big football fan and played, although he never got the chance to make it. I remember him coming home one day with eight footballs and taking me out, hitting one after the other, over and over and over. He had that ‘hooligan’ streak, a mad Chelsea fan. He liked [Michael] Ballack. He’s young, only 43. And because of him, my team is Chelsea.

“I joined Mallorca at 10,” Brandon continues. “I’d just signed for them when we played this international tournament near home and I was named the best player. There were lots of teams there and Everton wanted to sign me. They paid for a flight for me and my dad to go to see the training ground and everything; it was all set up. But Mallorca wouldn’t let me go. There’s that little thorn in my side still: I had the chance to go to Everton.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brandon Thomas says: ‘People talk about Benzema and Suárez, criticise them, and I just don’t get it. Us strikers know how difficult it is to do what they do.’ Photograph: Juan Pedro Urdiroz

But then he would have had to leave Mallorca. There is that glint in his eye again and Brandon says: “Yeah, and Mallorca is the best place on earth.” The outstanding player in the club’s youth system with his friend Marco Asensio, now at Madrid, he departed when the club needed funds following relegation, heading to Rennes. The following summer he joined Osasuna on loan, making the deal permanent this year after playing a key role in promotion to primera, scoring the day they clinched the second division title. In the club shop, his shirt was the second-best seller after captain Roberto Torres. “That’ll be everyone in England,” he jokes.

In Pamplona his twin brother, Jordan, joined him; the pair distinguishable virtually only by Brandon’s tattoos. “He was very good at football,” Brandon says. “He would have made it too, but he had a problem with his eye. He was playing futbolín [table football] and he got a handle in the eye. They had to operate twice; he only has 10% vision in one eye.”

Instead, Jordan became secretary general of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) in Santanyí. Aged 20 he was adviser to the health councillor in the Mallorca government. “He was the youngest [ever] to have a post,” Brandon says. “He knew people there, he was the right-hand man of the leader [from Santanyí who was the husband of the head of the health department], and very capable. But there was a lot of criticism because he was young, because of the salary, and he gave it up after two weeks. He’s here with me now, doing a law degree. There’s no time for politics now but maybe in the future.”

Brandon grins. “Football and politics do mix.”

The football, at least, is going well – although Chimy Ávila and Rubén García are the preferred partnership up front and the first division is, he admits, a step up. “It’s not the same watching them on the telly,” Brandon says. “I watched Madrid against PSG and thought: ‘This [Éder] Militão, pfff.’ I didn’t think he was that good, but then you play against him. I think I’m quick but I went flat out, sprinting and he just went ‘whoosh’. Holy shit! It was so easy. Then you bump into him and he’s so strong. You don’t realise that on telly.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brandon Thomas is beaten to the ball by Real Madrid’s Éder Militão. ‘I didn’t think he was that good but then you play against him ...’ Photograph: JuanJo Martin/EPA

“Barcelona’s players were just that bit quicker than us in everything, too; they think quicker. Generally, I’ve not seen such a difference between the first division and the second, but I did with those two clubs. For example: people talk about [Karim] Benzema and [Luis] Suárez, criticise them, and I just don’t get it. Us strikers know how difficult it is to do what they do.”

And yet Osasuna led Barcelona within 10 minutes, Brandon getting the better of Clément Lenglet to make the first, and secured a 2-2 draw. That was part of a run that saw Osasuna break a club record, unbeaten at home for 31 games, and they travel to Atlético only three points off Europe, two points behind their opponents.

Against Barcelona, Brandon was everywhere, chasing everything. He left with an assist, a point and Antoine Griezmann’s shirt. He also left “knackered”, he says. “I’m a guy who fights, gives everything. I reckon I’ve got character and I don’t get nervous; I don’t have nightmares about Gerard Piqué. Bloody hell, after that game, it will have been him dreaming of me. That’s the idea, anyway. We pressed hard, and you could see them, uncomfortable, thinking: ‘Shit.’ I was about to apologise afterwards: ‘Look, sorry that it was me chasing you everywhere, not the other way around.’

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“That’s Osasuna. You see El Sadar [the club’s stadium], the way they drive you on, and it gives you something extra. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say there are eight, nine, games we won because of the fans: you start losing and then it’s ...” Brandon imitates the crowd noise. “And we turn it around. That’s what this club is: it’s more about the stands, the people, the fight. My dad likes watching games there, that touch of passion, like England. My personality fits Osasuna and that’s why they like me: they see me as a bloke who gives everything.”

He starts laughing again. “That’s the Englishman in me, the loco inglés.”