Deportivo La Coruna's Lucas Perez's dream is real: local lad leaves LaLiga behind to rescue his boyhood club

A CORUNA, Spain -- "Every player has their experience, what they lived, their story," Lucas Perez says. "This is mine."

Outside, the winds whips through Abegondo, Deportivo de La Coruna's training ground, rattling windows. Inside, Perez, the club captain still in his training kit, is tracing his journey here, going back to the place it all began. To Monelos, the city neighbourhood where he was raised, with its fourteen blocks of flats, its drug problems and his dreams. To the stadium he always wanted to play in, and where he now does.

It is less than two miles from those fishermen's towers to Depor's home ground of Riazor, which stands on the beach and -- like Galicia, land of emigres, the northwestern corner of Spain that people leave -- looks out across the ocean. But Lucas's journey has been a lot longer.

"I grew up with my grandparents," he says. "My dad was at sea. He would be away for six months at a time or more: [in a fishing area called] Gran Sol in the Atlantic. I lived with my grandparents in Monelos; they raised me in one of the flats given to fishermen back in the day. It was a humble, working-class neighbourhood. Everyone knows each other, people live their whole lives there. The kids would play at school or on the concrete courts. I went to a team called Victoria; you could sign up from four or five years old. When I didn't play there I played in the street. And, basically, that was my story. My life. Always with a ball."

"I left home at 15. Alaves first. They had problems and decided to send a load of us home. A couple of years playing at local clubs. Montaneros. Ordenes. Then Atletico Madrid. Rayo Vallecano. Ukraine, Greece. I come home. I go again. To England. Arsenal. West Ham. Then Spain. Alaves. Elche. Cadiz. Now Depor.

"Half my life I have spent away from Galicia. Maybe you wouldn't have planned it like that, maybe that's not always the way you wanted it, but that's where life is: opportunity. I am in love with football. It's my passion. I knew what I wanted. I fought for it, pursued it, and I have been a professional for fifteen years. I have always played in the first division."

"Until now."

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Now Perez plays in Primera RFEF, the country's third tier with its forty teams and two divisions. Not because he had to, a 34-year-old striker past his best forced to slip silently down the divisions, but because he wanted to. This is the life he chose.

In January, Perez left first-division Cadiz -- where he was not just a starter but the top scorer, where he bade farewell by getting a goal on his very last game -- to sign for Deportivo de La Coruna, two divisions lower and a world away. In salary, for a start: a tenfold cut in pay.

But, he had decided, it was time to go home. To play for his team. It had been for a long time. "I wanted to play for Deportivo many years ago and I couldn't," he says. Now, he could. It cost him half a million euros to buy his freedom, and it was worth every cent. "I don't see this as going to the third division, I see this as going to Deportivo," he insists.

This is his third spell here, and it will be his last -- which is what he had wanted the others to be, too. It took him until he was 26 to make his debut for the club he supported. He went, came back, and was forced to leave again. He had been trying to make his final return happen for almost two years, seeking to convince Cadiz to let him go.

In January at last, he got his wish. There is something very fitting, very Galician about it. Here, where many go to sea, and many leave, they talk about morriña: the pull of the land, of home, a kind of longing, a nostalgia. Many never get back; Lucas did. Sometimes though, it must feel like it took too long to get here, where he always wanted to be.

"I don't see it as a case of taking too long; I see it as a case of things don't always happen when you want them to," he says. "Life is a process. You don't get where you want at the start. Everything in life costs.

"What matters is that I got to Deportivo, which is where I wanted to be and I have had a long, important career. I played in the Premier League. The hardest thing is always to have played in the first division, to remain at the highest level, and I did that. When I was in Ukraine I never thought I would play for a team like Arsenal or West Ham. And then to play for Depor. I'm proud of where I have been, how I got here and what I have achieved. I followed my path."

(Editor's Note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)

Sid Lowe: You set off, alone, at 15.

Perez: It's hard because I don't think you're ready for it. I had been living with my grandparents and they gave me everything. It was all done for me. And you go somewhere where you have to do it all. You turn up and there are people from other cities, other countries.

But it's nice too: I've played with players from Africa, South America, Europe. Russians, Ukrainians, English, Germans, every nationality. You might not like what's out there, you might decide that you like home more, but how do you know that until you have lived it? And if it's bad, you learn. That has been good for me, to help me understand what I like, where I want to go, where I want to be.

Was Ukraine really that bad?

It was the first adventure where I left the country. I was 20. You go there and you're abandoned, helpless. I didn't speak the language: not Ukrainian, not Russian, not English. There's a translator but what happens if you get ill? Who takes you to the doctor's or the pharmacy at 2 a.m.?

I was lucky, I became very good friends with Daniel. He was an Ecuadorian who lived there, studying at the university. He had economic difficulties and came to live with me. He helped me a lot. He spoke Ukrainian. If not, I don't know where I would be. We're young but it is true that we have money as players, compared to a normal 20-year-old and let's be honest: money helps. But 20 is still 20, away from home, without the language. The money doesn't bring your family close. In that sense it was hard; you feel forsaken. And then my teammates were...well, a bit like that, y'know? [There's a pause.] They weren't great teammates. But not just with me. With other foreigners too.

Why?

They didn't take well to the fact that there were people coming in from abroad who earned more money. [They felt] maybe the president liked people who came from outside more.

You had problems with the president, though.

They didn't pay. I was there because I had gone from Rayo, where we had that situation with [Rayo owners] the Ruiz Mateos family in which we had gone months without getting paid. We had no money, no salary, and a flat to pay for. I was 18, 19, I hadn't earned enough money to have a cushion to see me through that. I had no savings.

I went to Ukraine, they gave me a signing-on fee, and the first thing I did was buy myself a flat back home in A Coruna and try to save what I could. But then you might go four months without getting paid in Ukraine. Or he would decide that he was going to take 20%, 30% off you. You would go and ask why. Why? Because the president wanted to. And that's that.