How Spain's humble superstar Simon became world's best keeper
Peter Schmeichel handed Unai Simon the Yashin Trophy and the room applauded warmly. Then the world’s best goalkeeper spent his time talking about everybody else.
Simon thanked his parents and his brother. He thanked his girlfriend for being an “oasis of tranquillity”, and the friends from home who remind him that “many of us in this room are privileged”.
‘La cuadrilla’, the gang of lifelong friends that is a traditional part of Basque culture, has a WhatsApp group of its own, and he takes them on holiday every summer.
He thanked his coaches and team-mates. Like Simon, none of them are regulars on the covers of the media.
Then he talked about a man who could not be in the room at last month’s Ballon d’Or ceremony in London, but whose influence lives on - Simon’s youth academy mentor Koldo Asua, who died in 2021.
The Spain and Athletic Club number one is not your archetypal superstar. In fact, he is the complete opposite.
He stays away from the headlines and is relatively low profile when compared with some of the game’s other goalkeepers. His position as Spain’s number is regularly questioned - as was the decision to name him as the world’s best.
In the part-beauty pageant election that is the Ballon d’Or, being low key can work against you, but the case on the pitch is easy to state - even though it rattles those who see the Premier League as the highest standard reachable.
Back to the award. Most acceptance speeches are lists of names. This one drew a portrait of a man, and it explains why the voters got it right.
Simon’s mentor Asua spent 13 years in Bilbao working with young Athletic Club players, helping them keep their family ties and their studies alive next to football.
Simon told the Palladium Asua changed how he understood the game, and that what matters is “the legacy one leaves when this is over” - being remembered as a good person and a good team-mate.
He then turned to ex-Spain and Athletic goalkeeper Jose Angel Iribar, 83 years old and still an ambassador for the club.
Iribar, who holds the all-time appearances record at Athletic with 614 matches, wore black as a homage to legendary goalkeeper Levin Yashin - the Russian ‘Black Spider’ - and Simon wears the same colour as a tribute to Iribar.
Simon’s parents also got a mention, because they raised him with values later reinforced at Athletic: respect for authority, a work ethic and keeping close to people who love you.
Before Spain’s World Cup final triumph, Simon spoke about the natural order in which other goalkeepers could soon replace him. Arsenal’s David Raya is one of those players in that queue.
Before England’s Nations League visit to Spain on Sunday, Simon keeps his place with that competition beside him. Raya and Joan Garcia must wait for their moment to take the number one shirt of the best national team in the world.
Spain won the World Cup and Simon conceded the fewest goals during the tournament, which earned him the Golden Glove.
He conceded a single goal in the whole competition and kept seven clean sheets. His longest run without conceding lasted about 650 minutes, beating the 517-minute record of Italy’s Walter Zenga at the 1990 tournament.
After the tournament, Simon talked about not having had much to do.
“If my gloves could talk, they would say they have not worked as hard as other goalkeepers’ gloves,” he said. As if it had all been that easy.
The team trusts him so much they know he will be there when needed, and his involvement in build-up is part of how Spain play.
Behind that summer sits a longer body of work: the Nations League, the European Championship and, in 2023-24, the Zamora Trophy - given to the keeper with the lowest goals conceded to games ratio in Spain - the first for an Athletic goalkeeper since Iribar in 1970.
He has not had it easy. Simon was born in Vitoria in 1997, grew up in the village of Murgia and joined Athletic’s academy in 2011, aged 14.
In 2018 Athletic sold Kepa Arrizabalaga to Chelsea, and Simon, a young goalkeeper out of Basconia and Bilbao Athletic, who had been sent on loan to Elche, became first choice almost by accident.
An injury to the number two Iago Herrerin, and the refusal of Alejandro Remiro to renew his contract, brought Simon back to Bilbao after only 20 days at Elche.
Many thought he would be a temporary solution. He made the position his own, and a year later he won the Under-21 European Championship with Spain. The coach? Luis de la Fuente.
His game has grown as well. Luis Enrique saw he could play with his feet and was patient with him, and Simon says the rest took a lot of analysis and training and a bit of courage.
There were doubts along the way. During the last Nations League, even De la Fuente said Simon had been badly treated for a long time, and the coach kept picking him.
Now Simon has been voted the best. He collected 351 points in the Ballon d’Or voting and finished 128 ahead of Raya in second place, with Thibaut Courtois third. Two years ago he had come second to Emi Martinez with 213 points, and last year he was not among the 10 nominees.
By his own account he is shy with people he does not know. He says he likes to “stay away from the hustle and bustle”, yet friends and neighbours back home say he is the opposite with the people he does know.
He has no social media account any more, because he read everything written about him and let it decide how he felt, terrible after the bad comments and brilliant after the good ones.
The choice that explains the rest came in 2024. Simon signed a contract to 2029 with no release clause and said he wanted to be the best goalkeeper in the world as part of Athletic.
“I owe the life I have to Athletic,” he said. Athletic’s Basque-only policy means there is no Champions League every year and individual awards are difficult to get. But now he is the first Spanish goalkeeper to win the Yashin Trophy.
When he was small there was no drinking water in his village, and he often helped his grandparents fill the jugs from the water tanker.
On one of his latest visits, he arrived in the car he has driven for eight years, gathered all the village children and took them for a kickabout.
That is what he did with his biggest night: he gave it away to others.
Do you still think that the boy who used to tear his trousers diving on dirt pitches and on asphalt, to his mother’s despair, does not deserve the prize?
