When Fuenlabrada’s bus rolls through the gates into the Santiago Bernabéu on Tuesday night, there will be an Englishman on board. In early July Conor O’Keefe, a 22-year-old goalkeeper and university student from Macclesfield, boarded a plane, hired a car and flew to Spain armed with nothing but a gigantic spreadsheet and Google Maps. There, he knocked on the door of every club within an hour radius until the third-division leaders invited him in; two months later, the Copa del Rey draw paired them with Real Madrid. And although he will not play, this is his team now – 48 clubs and hundreds of golden envelopes later.

“I rang my dad: ‘We’re going to Real Madrid,’” he says. Richard O’Keefe knew how long his son’s journey had been and how much further it still has to run: from Crewe to Macclesfield and a season spent travelling the north-west, turning out for nine different teams, a kind of supply goalkeeper always on call; from turning down a youth contract, instead playing as a two‑year “triallist” because it was the only way they would let him sit A-levels, to chasing clubs and agents; from joining Olympic high-jumpers and a former Rada-trained actor turned athletics coach named Fuzz Caan, to the home of Ronaldo, Bale and Benzema.

Everywhere he went, he was asked the same question: how tall are you? He is 6ft, which is, he kept getting told, not tall enough. But his refusal to be beaten – a photo showing him kick the crossbar proves he could compensate – led him to do something too few British players contemplate: seek opportunity abroad. One of only three English players in Spain, he sits on the bench at Fuenlabrada’s 9,000-capacity Fernando Torres stadium, just audible over the lawnmower crossing the pitch, and explains how he got here.

The third year of an international business studies degree requires a placement in industry or study abroad. O’Keefe chose both: the industry he chose was football; the location, Madrid. Or it was supposed to be: laughing, he recalls finding out the campus was actually in Getafe but at least it was good for his game. “I’d always enjoyed Spanish football and loved watching Iker Casillas: he was smaller and I could relate,” he says. “There was hope. Size is not such an issue. Claudio Bravo, Marc‑André ter Stegen and Keylor Navas are not massive but win titles. That showed me you didn’t have to be 6ft 4in.

“There’s unfounded debate that foreigners coming in make it harder for English players to build a career,” he says. “England Under-17s win the World Cup and it’s: ‘They’ll never have a chance to play first-team football.’ It’s such a closed point of view, not just for players but for managers. Whether that’s a culture thing – maybe we’re lazy, don’t push languages, or just don’t see ourselves abroad – I don’t know, but players think if they’re cut at 17, 21, it’s over. But there are 100-plus other countries in Fifa. Go and see if you can play somewhere else.

“If you don’t feel you can do it, do you really want it that much? Brazilians up sticks and go to the Ukraine, where it’s freezing cold, where they can’t speak, thousands of miles from home because they need to play. British players need to develop that attitude.”

We got on the flight on 12 July, rented a car, stayed in an Airbnb and did eight, nine, 10 clubs a day

It is one thing being prepared to go to play, another having somewhere to go to play. Agents ignored him. “I said to my parents: ‘If we can’t get an agent, we’ll just have to do what an agent does,’” he recalls. “So, I started a big Excel spreadsheet and listed all the clubs I could find from primera to the fifth tier. I went through every team in every league, found their addresses, put it into Google Maps and if it was within an hour of Madrid, it went in.”

Forty-eight clubs were included. “I put in the name of the club, the distance, the time it takes to drive, any detail I could find: office phone numbers, email addresses, staff. It took a week and looked great. I emailed them all. Nothing. But I had the addresses, so I thought: ‘I’m going to handwrite letters.’ I remembered an entrepreneur saying he wrote to investors in golden envelopes. If a letter turns up in a golden envelope you think: ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ It’s not just a bill and you’re going to toss it.

“I went to Ryman and must have bought over a hundred golden envelopes – which, by the way, aren’t cheap. I sent two to every person on my spreadsheet, all handwritten in Spanish, translated by my girlfriend, Frankie. And the postman is my best mate, I’m down to the post office every day. ‘Yeah, more.’ They were lovely; helping lick stamps, weighing them, sending them off. “

Still nothing.

“So, I said: ‘Let’s go.’ I was like: ‘We’ve got our spreadsheet, we’ve got our addresses and we’ve got a week.’ We got on the flight on 12 July, rented a car, stayed in an Airbnb and did eight, nine, 10 clubs a day. Every club on the spreadsheet: Real Madrid, first team and B team, Atlético Madrid, the same, Getafe, Leganés, Rayo Vallecano, Fuenlabrada …

Conor O’Keefe was invited to train with Fuenlabrada after a concerted effort to join the club. ‘They told me they had four golden envelopes from me: two each for the manager and the goalkeeper coach.’ Photograph: Pablo Garcia

“At Atlético, I handed a security guard a letter for Cholo Simeone; at Real we never got near – the gate’s half a mile from the actual training ground. At Getafe and Leganés we got close: they let us watch training. Most were very kind and we got some face-time. I had these stock phrases I’d practise – I didn’t speak any Spanish – and then Frankie would talk. We spoke to people in club houses, left letters at reception, waited by gates, tried to catch coaches going in.”

One day the Rayo goalkeeper coach walked past as they were leaving another letter with the receptionist. They collared him and O’Keefe convinced him to let him train with the B team. But a text message one night a few weeks later broke bad news. They had signed a first-team goalkeeper, so the previous B‑team keeper, who had a contract O’Keefe didn’t, dropped into his place. “Bloody hell. I felt like a failure.”

In the meantime, though, Fuenlabrada had replied, too. “They told me they had four golden envelopes from me: two each for the manager and the goalkeeper coach,” he laughs. “They’re thinking: ‘Who’s the crazy English guy writing golden envelopes?’ They could’ve had a massive laugh and joke about it in the office, and just binned it but they appreciated the effort and got in touch.”

Last year we were playing Shepshed Dynamo in the FA Vase in front of 28 people at a ground called Butthole Lane

There, he joined first-team training with Pol Freixanet and Jordi Cordina. “Extraordinary keepers,” he says and experienced men who began at Málaga and Madrid respectively. Eventually, paperwork sorted, O’Keefe was registered for the B team, which, once the winter window opens, will make him eligible for the first team. He rates Manolo Rubio, the goalkeeper coach, as among the best, benefiting from a different perspective.

“English goalkeeping is very busy, very intense, very fast. Ten, 15 repetitions, sprinting everywhere. It’s speed, power and I always sought to excel at that but Manolo says: ‘You have all these things but your technique suffers as a result. You’re trying to do everything really fast.’ I train in gloves every day, which I never did. Another example: I always wanted to be in a Spanish rondo and you come here and realise it’s a session in itself. In the UK, you’re trying to ’meg your mate. It’s a laugh, trying to stitch people up. It’s fun here, yeah, but it’s training. You’ve started. You don’t want to be the worst in there.”

Is he? He is a goalkeeper after all. “Hmm,” he says. There’s a pause. “No,” he replies, eventually. “I was.”

And that’s the point. “I want to develop. You watch Ter Stegen distribute to both sides with both feet. I want to be a symmetrical goalkeeper: able to throw with both arms, distribute off the floor with both feet, half-volley, side-volley, open up the whole pitch. I feel myself improving. I came for that: to see, learn, experience.”

Quite an experience awaits. “Last year we were playing Shepshed Dynamo in the FA Vase in front of 28 people at a ground called Butthole Lane,” he says. “Now I’m part of a club going to the Bernabéu.” He’s been to Real Madrid before of course but this time is different; this time he will get through the door.