Kirian Rodríguez, Las Palmas’ leader, hits new heights after cancer recovery

Photograph: Gabriel Jimenez Lorenzo/AFP7/Shutterstock

“Life is a rollercoaster,” Kirian Rodríguez said. When second division Las Palmas reported for pre-season last summer, the midfielder told them something wasn’t right: he was tired, didn’t want to eat and couldn’t sleep. His spleen was inflamed, his kidneys hurt and his calcium levels were too high. Doctors removed a cyst and the results of the biopsy revealed a Hodgkin lymphoma, cancer. It was August 2022 and he was 26. He underwent six sessions of chemotherapy, crossing them out on a calendar. There were pills and injections, he felt weak and his hair fell out. But the worst thing, he said later, was the fear that he wouldn’t play football again, which is what really makes him happy.

It’s what makes a lot of other people happy too. “Cancer is something associated with death; I had to be the strong one,” Kirian told ESPN. The day he announced his illness, sitting smiling in a press conference surrounded by his teammates, he told them in a calm, steady voice that broke only once and only briefly, that he didn’t want pity and that he would still be there, still shouting from the stands, still the pain in the arse he always was. Above all, he told them he would play again. There was no hurry, but he set a date. Mentally, he needed to: a public promise there to be fulfilled, it would be done, the positivism part of the process and consciously chosen. The winter window would the best they had had because he would be back.

Two days later, in the hospital waiting room before his first chemo session, Kirian overheard a woman talking about that footballer with the same illness, unaware he was sitting opposite. He bit his tongue for a bit until he heard her mention how he wasn’t likely to play again. “Señora,” he said, “at least let me try.” The treatment continued and so did the training sessions at Barranco Seco, where he had been going daily for a decade, a kid from Tenerife who joined them as a teenager. His hair slowly returned, his strength too. “The day I’m cured will be the day the fourth official holds up the board with my number on,” he said.

In November 2022, he completed his chemo cycle; in January 2023, he was given the all clear; and then, in April, the fourth official did. On a Sunday night in Zaragoza, 271 days later, Las Palmas’s No 20 stepped back on to a football pitch. Kirian Rodríguez Concepción, the best signing they could have ever made.

This Saturday afternoon, 258 days after that, Kirian’s number went up again. This time, he headed back in the other direction. There were four minutes left and his work here was done when he handed over the captain’s armband and made his way to a standing ovation. It is not just that he he played again; it is that he is playing like this, in a higher league and better than ever before. He had just produced a performance, an afternoon so good, virtually perfect in virtually every way, it was hard to know which moment to choose, which snapshot best expressed everything he is and all he has become.

Maybe it was the first goal, a minute-long move unfolding at his feet: from Kirian to Mika Mármol to Kirian to Sergi Cardona to Kirian to Alberto Moleiro to Kirian to finish, not so much a shot as another pass, this time into the net. Or the way he celebrated it, pointing at the 20-year-old, born in the same town, who he is guiding and who had laid it off. Maybe it was the way he celebrated the second, embracing Juanma Herzog, the 19-year-old Canarian, like him, who had just scored on his debut and was in tears. Or how he swept in the third in a 3-0 victory, spotlight again ceded to the player who played the pass, all of it about Javi Muñoz.

Maybe it was the 65 passes of his own; the moment of complicity with Dani Parejo, the little smile and a word when his opponent hit the bar; the calm authority with which he ran this game and every game, the complete control he appears to have over everything. His is a strength worn lightly, almost gently, not imposed, the group above all else – and it was there too in the moment that most stood out, in the way that the fans stood up for him and the way that he stood up to them, defending his teammates.

Six days earlier, Las Palmas had been defeated in the Canary Island derby, second division Tenerife knocking them out of the Copa del Rey 2-0. Kirian had played just 20 minutes. It had been their worst performance of the season and, arriving back on the boat late at night, the fans had been furious. Now, a week having passed and league victory secured, Kirian approached them, the voice of the fans’ leader on the microphone declaring “quiet, the captain wants to say something” as he came towards the stand. There was a hush, and he began.

“We have a bloody brilliant bond; all of us together make a brilliant group,” Kirian told them. “And we all suffer. We go home pissed off too. Many of the insults these lads got they didn’t deserve. It hurts them, it hurts, just like it hurts all of you. They cry too. We have to stay together. When someone puts four past us, they put four past us. We’ll fall, we’ll cry, we’ll do what we have to do. But when we suffer, we will need you more than ever. Today was a day to get back up again.” From the stands there was applause, reconciliation complete, and then they started to sing: How Could We Not Love You?

Well, quite. When Kirian came on against Zaragoza in April, playing his first game of the season 38 weeks in, Las Palmas were losing 1-0. By the time he went off again, they had equalised. He started the next four games of the season which were also the last four games of the season and they didn’t lose any of them, clinching automatic promotion on goal difference, returning to the first division six years later. “We went up and made lots of people happy but the biggest triumph was Kirian becoming a footballer again,” the club’s manager, García Pimienta, said.

And what a footballer. Kirian had never been there, and it took six weeks for Las Palmas to secure a first division victory. When at last they did, against Granada, he was the one who scored the winner – with a brilliant shot in the 90th minute. In that run at the end of last season, they had played Eibar, Cartagena, Alavés, and Villarreal B; this Saturday he scored twice against Villarreal’s first team, moving Las Palmas to three points off a European place.

“It’s been a hard week: the cup game hurt. But this group trains like the very best; it’s an incredible group, a pleasure. It’s very hard to find a dressing room like ours, with the unity we have. When the weekend comes you have to enjoy it. Hopefully we still haven’t found our ceiling,” Kirian said. “Football has put us where it puts us: on the crest of a wave,” came the voice from the stands at the end of that exchange at full-time.

With five goals, Kirian is Las Palmas’s top scorer, but it is not that; it is everything, including the experiences that shape him and those around him. Kirian has studied psychology, and there is a moment for mindfulness before every game. He is the embodiment of everything they want to be, a tiny team with the second smallest salary limit in primera who have more of the ball than anyone except Madrid and Barcelona – not least because, he says, if they just booted it we would probably be down by January. Besides, he insists: in the Canaries you grow up with a ball at your feet; why would you ever want to change that?

“What can I say about him? He’s a player for whom there’s a special feeling,” García Pimienta says. “That’s been there from the start. [But] this season he has taken a step forward in terms of leadership, he plays really well, he wants every ball; he never hides.”

He has been involved in more than three times as many plays than the rest of Las Palmas’s midfielders, provided three times more passes and created twice as many chances. Across the whole of La Liga, only one player has completed more passes or had more touches – Girona’s Aleix García – only two players have completed more passes in the opposition’s half, and only six have recovered possession more. “He had the problem last year and now look how he is playing: it’s a sweet moment and he deserves it,” García Pimienta said.

There genuinely may be no one better this season; there is certainly no one you would rather see play. As he made his way off on Saturday, the coach whose team he had taken apart was among those applauding him; more than any other, maybe that was the moment. “I just wanted to express how happy I am to see him leave all that behind,” the Villarreal manager, Marcelino García Toral, said. Is this the best moment of your career, Kirian was asked. “Yes, without doubt,” he said. “For everything: for my family, my people, the group, the island. Everything’s come together after what I lived last year. I’m enjoying this to the maximum, because in the end life is a rollercoaster.”