"I sincerely get teary-eyed when I see him there. I think of my parents, the effort they made, but above all I remember my mother. If she got to see her grandson defending the colors of his country, of Equatorial Guinea, in an Africa Cup... She wouldn't have believed it! The dream of her life was to return to her country one day and seeing her grandson there would have comforted her a lot."
The football afternoon that was experienced at the Coco's house in Lanzarote was more than just that: just another football match. Within those 90 epic minutes, a lot of feelings, of emotions that exploded when the duel came to an end and the Equatorial Guinea team completed one of their happiest days (1-0). Because the Nzalang Nacional finished off Algeria, the current champion that seemed invincible. A condition that was not won by word of mouth but with numbers: 35 matches without losing, current record among world teams.
"It seemed impossible to us, nobody thought this could happen. We went crazy", explains Basilio Coco-Bassey, father of Saúl, central defender of UD Las Palmas and starter yesterday in the match against the Desert Foxes. Basilio is still half incredulous, navigating between the pride that it means to see his son with the colors of his parents' country, from which he left with 15 days of life, together with the ardor that runs through him after a heroic victory. An iconic 0-1 already for the Equatoguinean football.
Everything in a party at the Coco-Bassey's home. There, Basilio joined his wife May Oubiña, his daughters Dariam and Alejandra, as well as his sister Silvia and his niece Lia. "It was an explosion of happiness, we went crazy. A brutal thing. Some neighbor would think that we were like this because of Real Madrid", he says while laughing. After the feat, the call to the protagonist. "It's a dream. An hour later they were still there celebrating it", he says. It is not for less: Equatorial Guinea depends on itself to enter the round of 16.
Read the full story in La Provincia
