Spain and their two young wingers have lit up the Euro 24. One, Lamine Yamal, is now a household name thanks to his heroics. The other is Nico Williams, who also had his breakthrough tournament on the world stage. All the light now shines brightly on him just like it was on his parents in 1994. But the light was a different kind of light for Nico’s parents.
The blinding lights were from the border security forces of Melilla, a Spanish autonomy in North Africa. How did they get there? That is far from the glamorous life Nico now has at his disposal.
It all began in 1993 when Nico’s parents, Felix Williams and Maria Arthur, decided to leave Ghana for a better future. While their target was London to escape the harsh conditions, they were soon persuaded to settle in Spain for a discounted fee.
Discounted because the cost of travelling by sea to the English isles could be avoided if the journey was on land, through the unforgiving Sahara desert in North-West Africa. ‘The journey to Spain ends here,’ is all they heard when they were stranded in the middle of the desert with no edible supplies.
The journey ended there because they were tangled with human traffickers. The mission wasn’t a success for the criminals and hightailing was the need of the hour in the scorching heat of the desert.
Then a dreaded walk started for the newly wed Williams couple. Unbeknown to them, 3 Williams made the journey, with an unborn Inaki in Maria’s womb, which they found out later. Felix’s barefoot walk in the searing sand ended when they reached Melilla. But then they were arrested for being unlawful immigrants.
In Christianity, faith in God is the strongest sentiment. For Felix and Maria, their faith was answered by a Caritas lawyer visiting the captives. He wised up the couple to alter their identities as Liberians rather than Ghanaians. The result was the Spanish government’s approval of them as victims of wars seeking political asylum. That’s how the Williams couple entered Spain.
Through a train journey, they reached Pamplona, Bilbao and to escort them on their journey, a Catholic missionary was present by their side, sent from the same organisation, Caritas. His name is the one their firstborn son now has, Inaki.
Just after two months of moving to Bilbao, Inaki was born on June 15, 1994. The missionary, Inaki Mardones, gave them housing, daily supplies, became Inaki’s Godfather and gave the little one his first jersey, a jersey of Athletic Bilbao.
After 20 years, Inaki made his professional debut in the same red and white stripes of Bilbao, a place the Williams family still call home. But meanwhile, the Williams family expanded from 3 to 4. On July 12, 2002, Maria gave birth to her second son, Nicolas, who we now know as Nico Williams, the rampaging winger in Spanish colours.
‘As an older brother, it makes me really proud to see how he has grown, to see how he is improving as a footballer. He has no ceiling,’ a proud Inaki said in an interview earlier this year. ‘I’m here to help him, to teach him and give him everything he needs.’
And this has been the theme of Nico’s life since he was born. Inaki is more of a father figure to Nico than Felix due to the fact that he left for London for almost 10 years to support the family in Bilbao, where Maria worked for daily chores.
Felix found a job working the turnstiles at Chelsea‘s Stamford Bridge, the work he did with scars on his soles, a souvenir from Sahara. Throughout all this, Nico’s faith remained true as a devoted Christian, all passed down by the inspiring tale of his brother’s godfather.
The Williams brothers are the first pair of siblings from the African lineage to represent Bilbao, a club that has a strict rule of only fielding players from the Basque Country. Nico comes from the ethnic group of Afro-Spaniards, due to his birth in Spain and his ancestry coming from Ghana and Liberia (from Maria’s side).
“The story of your parents makes you fight even harder to give back everything they sacrificed for us. I could never repay them – they risked their lives – but the life I’m trying to give them is the life they dreamed of giving us. And, to a certain extent, we can say, ‘We did it,'” Nico’s big brother said in an interview about the life they have now, a life they’ve earned together.