“He is one of ours. That is the point.”
Oswaldo Mina's 119th goal for Fuenlabrada draws him level with Nico Calero, and the club knows what it has.
The ball skids low, the keeper wrong-footed, and the home end rises before the net ripples. Oswaldo Mina peels away, arms wide, not pointing to his name but to the badge. The scoreboard ticks over. Fuenlabrada 2, visitors 0. The number that matters is 119.
That is Calero's mark, set across a decade in the blue shirt, and now matched by an Ecuadorian who arrived as a teenager and never left. Mina has played 340 league games for Fuenlabrada, all in the Spanish Second Division, and scored at a rate of one every 2.86 matches. Calero needed more games—though the record books are not here to argue—but the club's all-time list now has two names at the top.
Four goals this season, and the winter months ahead. The next one will not just be a goal; it will be the goal. Fuenlabrada have one major title to their name, and a support that remembers the lean years. They know a one-club man when they see one.
Mina has 45 caps and 12 goals for Ecuador, but this is not about that. It is about the simplest arithmetic in football: 119 equals 119, and the next one tips the balance. The crowd stayed long after the final whistle, chanting the same two syllables. They know what comes next.