UD Las Palmas return home on Friday night after four weeks away, welcoming Getafe in the curtain-raiser for the weekend’s action in LaLiga EA Sports.
Their players – led by home-grown midfielder Kirian Rodriguez – will be hoping to reproduce the magic of the occasion from the last time they stepped out at Estadio Gran Canaria. An entertaining and well-drilled performance earned Los Amarillos a deserved three points against one of the giants of Spanish football.
Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid were the ones to fall to defeat that night. Rodriguez himself scored the opener in a 2-1 win – a meaningful moment for the 27-year-old stand-in skipper who in 2022 announced he was stepping away from football to battle Hodgkin lymphoma, a form of cancer.
Las Palmas earned promotion back to the Spanish top flight last season, a campaign which Kirian missed the majority of as he made a full recovery, and now he’s helping the first team of the club he’s been with since youth as they go toe-to-toe with the country’s biggest clubs. They’re even toppling them in Atletico’s case.
The focus inside the club, however, remains safety-first. While their football makes Las Palmas one of the most watchable teams in LaLiga, staying there this season is of primary importance.
They’ve made a strong start, and are accumulating their points in an entertaining style which is instilled in the club’s players through youth teams and led at first-team level by Francisco Javier García Pimienta – who managed for several years in Barcelona’s youth ranks before moving to Gran Canaria in January 2022.
Everything, from Kirian’s presence in the first team – he’s one of eight local players in the first team squad – to García Pimienta’s appointment have been part of a wider plan which has led the team to recent successes. This is a club leaning into its roots and wanting to tell its story, as 90min were lucky enough to find out during a recent visit, through an entertaining brand of football led by academy graduates and talented youth players.
Football is central to the island’s identity and Las Palmas are its emblem.
Unión Deportiva Las Palmas are the only professional football club in Gran Canaria, the third-largest of the Canary Islands and situated 1,100km south-west of mainland Spain. It’s geographical proximity puts it closer to Morocco in West Africa, but Las Palmas has…
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