Open Extended ReactionsKirian RodrÃguez scored the winning goal for Las Palmas against Granada to secure their first victory of the 2023-24 LaLiga season upon being promoted. (Photo by Gabriel Jimenez Lorenzo/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)
It's Aug. 2, 2022, and Kirian RodrÃguez has some bad news. You wouldn't know it from the Las Palmas midfielder's body language, as he laughs and jokes about how many people have turned up for his news conference at Barranco Seco, the club's training ground on the island of Gran Canaria. But the topic of conversation couldn't be more serious.
"There's been a lot of speculation about my health," the 26-year-old says, smiling. "It's best that I come out and explain it: how I am, how I'm not, what I have and what I don't.
"When I got back for preseason, I told the club I hadn't been feeling well. I'd had pain in my kidneys. The club carried out some tests, and found my spleen was swollen. My calcium levels weren't right. They took me to hospital, did all kinds of tests and biopsies. They extracted a lymph node. And on Saturday, they confirmed that I have Hodgkin lymphoma."
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Hodgkin is a cancer that affects the lymphatic system, which is part of the immune system. If detected early, it can be treated and cured -- a study in England found that 75% of patients survive for 10 or more years after diagnosis.
"I'll be out of action for a while," Rodriguez adds. "But I'll still be around, in the stands, shouting instructions and annoying everyone. It's a different battle. A different game. The fight starts here."
It's only now, five minutes after he started speaking, that his voice breaks: "I want you to see that I'm strong. I don't want to hear any messages of sadness or support. And in December, you'll have the best winter transfer window. Because I'll be back."
Fast forward 17 months and Rodriguez isn't just back. Ahead of Las Palmas hosting Real Madrid in LaLiga on Saturday, he's one of the best players in Spain; the key figure in Las Palmas' triumphant return to the top flight.
In January 2023, Rodriguez was given the all-clear to play again. In April -- 271 days after he told the world he had cancer -- he returned to the team, and on May 27 he helped them win promotion to the First Division. Now Las Palmas are eighth in LaLiga, playing a confident, recognisable brand of possession-first football under the former Barcelona B coach, Francisco Garcia Pimienta.
Rodriguez is the team's captain and heartbeat, playing in 20 of his side's 21 league games so far, even scoring five goals. Only one player in LaLiga -- Aleix GarcÃa, captain of first-placed Girona -- has touched the ball more often (1,881 compared to 1,837). Only Garcia has completed more passes (1,423 to 1,402). And only two players, Madrid's Toni Kroos and Garcia, have played more progressive passes, moving the ball significantly closer to the opponent's goal.
4 - Las Palmas's Kirian RodrÃguez has been involved in four goals (three goals and one assist) in his last five appearances in LaLiga. Streak. pic.twitter.com/lFRnQyDhXt
— OptaJose (@OptaJose) January 13, 2024
In Las Palmas, the largest city in the Canary Islands and Spain's ninth-biggest by population, Rodriguez has become a local hero. "I've been getting a lot of messages of thanks lately," he tells ESPN's Martin Ainstein, in an interview for the series The Bicycle Diaries. "Not because of football, but because of the illness. For being an inspiration to people who might decide to stop fighting when really, they could get through it."
Born in Candelaria, on the neighbouring island of Tenerife, Rodriguez joined Las Palmas' academy as a teenager. He's well qualified to explain what makes football in the Canaries -- an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, 600 miles southwest of the Spanish mainland -- different. "There's something special about the Canary Islands," Rodriguez tells ESPN. "Canarian footballers have something, a joy in the way they play football. They want the ball.
"Football has become very physical and duels are important, but we defend with the ball. If we have the ball, it's harder for [the opponent] to score."
Las Palmas and Tenerife are the two giants of Canary Islands football. Their derby rivalry is among Spain's fiercest. "In Madrid you've got Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Rayo Vallecano. A lot of teams," Rodriguez says. "Here in the Canary Islands, it's Tenerife and Las Palmas. In the newspapers, on the local TV, they only talk about Las Palmas and Tenerife. You know the players, you see them in the street. Everyone follows the clubs."
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Las Palmas have yo-yoed between the First and Second Divisions for most of their 74-year history. When Rodriguez was diagnosed with cancer, they were preparing for their fifth consecutive season in the second tier.
"By the end of 2021-22, my body didn't feel good," Rodriguez tells ESPN. "In every game and training session, I didn't feel comfortable. When I went away for the summer, I realised something wasn't right. I was getting tired quickly, I wasn't sleeping well. I had practically no appetite, no strength, no energy. So when I went back for preseason, I said 'something isn't right.' From there it was all tests and analysis, looking at my urine, looking at my blood, looking at everything to see what the problem was. And when they started looking at my blood, they realised what it was."
Hodgkin lymphoma can develop at any age, although it's most often diagnosed in people in their 20s and 30s, and over the age of 75. Its cause is unknown.
"In that moment [of diagnosis], my parents were there with me," Rodriguez tells ESPN. "It was a difficult moment for them, seeing their faces. Older people associate cancer with death. In the old days it was like that. Nowadays, thank God, medicine has advanced a lot. I mainly took it as a positive: just tell me what it is, so that we can deal with it. My thought from the beginning was: let's fight it.
"You start to investigate everything. You look for nutritionists, exercises that you can do, things to help the chemotherapy have a better effect on your body. Almost all the recommendations of things you could eat were things I was already eating. So, it's like 'Well... you're doing pretty much everything right.'
"You don't choose. It's not because you look after yourself or you don't, or because you're more or less fit. It's luck."
With the rest of the Las Palmas squad travelling to Marbella for preseason training in July 2022, Rodriguez had to make a decision. Rumours had begun to circulate about his health, fuelled by a positive COVID-19 test when he'd gone into hospital, so he decided to address them head on. And his way of breaking the news -- the upbeat, almost light-hearted way he chose to speak to the media that August -- was deliberate too.
"I was [feeling] fine," he tells ESPN. "I hadn't had any chemotherapy sessions. I still had great hair. It was a way to reach people, for them to see that I was strong. Maybe if I'd done it after the second or third chemo session, if I'd already lost weight, if I'd lost my hair, people might think 'he's saying that to reassure us.' "It was how I wanted people to see me, so the message they'd give me when they saw me in the street was what I wanted: a positive message, not one of sorrow or sadness.
"I think if I did it again, I wouldn't have the strength. But seeing my father, my mother, my girlfriend, how they were when I came out of hospital ... They were thinner than me. They were worse off. It made me realise I had to be the strong one."
Treatment usually starts with chemotherapy. "For me, it was counting down the days," Rodriguez says. "If I knew I had six chemo sessions, when I'd had the first one, I'd cross it off. I'd say, '21 days left, five chemo sessions to go.'
"Every time I had a chemo session, I had five shots. Every time I crossed off a chemo session, it was five fewer jabs. So it was no longer 30, it was 25 ... I was confident that when the last one came, I'd be OK. My thinking was, 'I'm crossing them off because I know they're going to be the last ones.'
"You trust that you'll be [cancer] free, that six [chemo sessions] will be enough. In the end I was lucky, it was like that. I've seen many cases of people who've had more sessions, who started at the same time as me and are still fighting. People who've fallen by the wayside. It's very, very different for everyone."
On Jan. 12, 2023, Rodriguez held another news conference at Barranco Seco -- this time surrounded by teammates, his manager and club staff -- to confirm that he had been given the green light to return to football.
The announcement we had been looking forward to! ðŸ˜
Kirian RodrÃguez receives a medical discharge and recovers his position in the first team!🔗 https://t.co/C4pMBDBjJ7
#UnityMakesLasPalmas 💛💙 @Kirian10rguez pic.twitter.com/7MuUkPCXtw
— UDLP English (@UDLP_english) January 12, 2023
"It sounds a bit selfish and a bit gross," he tells ESPN. "Being healthy was good, but being given the OK to play was the best thing. I could go back to my day-to-day life. You could be discharged [from hospital] and never be able to play again. But to be able to play, to feel like a footballer, to train with your teammates, that's priceless."
It took time to regain his match fitness. After nine games as an unused substitute, Rodriguez came off the bench in the 73rd minute of a 1-1 draw at Real Zaragoza on April 30, 2023. By then, Las Palmas were chasing promotion. The midfielder's return came just in time. He started the last four games of the season, helping them earn eight points, including a nervy 0-0 draw with Alavés on the final day to go up.
"It's the most beautiful feeling," he says. "All season, in the 20th minute [reflecting his shirt number], the fans had been chanting my name. The whole stadium helped me. So at the final whistle, you find yourself inside your head, experiencing a moment you thought would never come. And on top of that, you're playing, doing your bit to give back everything [the fans] have given you. That's a great moment."
Las Palmas' 2023-24 season back in Primera started slowly. Between August and September, they went five games without winning. When the three points finally came, in a 1-0 win over Granada on Sept. 24, it was thanks to Rodriguez's goal in added time.
"It was the first win," he tells ESPN. "And it wasn't winning in the first minute. It was being a man down, in the 92nd minute, after suffering the whole game, not having won since the start of the season. That almost made me burst into tears. I can only imagine my mother's face. It was about starting to believe that we're good, that we're capable of playing in the first division, that we can compete against anyone."
You might expect a cancer survivor to say their experience has changed them as a person. How could it not?
"In the beginning, I used to say it hadn't changed me all that much," Rodriguez admits. "I thought that what it had done was reinforce my thoughts on my way of living, on the people I have around me. But every day I realise that a lot of things have changed. My sense of calm. Having fun in my day-to-day life. Taking training sessions differently.
When you go home after a defeat, it's different. I'm not superstitious [anymore]. My girlfriend used to wear a shirt to a match and if we lost, she couldn't wear it again. You place less importance on those things. You think 'It's fine. It's okay. Tomorrow is another day.'"
Rodriguez has grown as a leader, too. He wasn't on Las Palmas' list of club captains when the season started. Now, he wears the armband, handling good or bad results with the same sense of clarity and calm. After Las Palmas beat Villarreal 3-0 on Jan. 13 -- Rodriguez scoring twice -- he came across to speak to the team's hardcore fans, unhappy at how they had treated the team after a derby defeat to Tenerife in the Copa del Rey a week earlier.
"We have an amazing bond," he told the crowd. "We're a fantastic group. We all suffer. We all go home angry. It's alright to complain about it, but I don't think the lads deserved a lot of the insults the other day. It hurts them, like it hurts you. Don't think that we go into the dressing room and it's all smiles. They cry. It hurts us. Let's maintain our unity... When we suffer, we need you more than ever. That's the time to help lift us up."
It's a lesson learned from experience.
"You fail more than you succeed in life," Rodriguez tells ESPN. "In everything -- in exams, every time we train ... It's easier to fail than to get it right. Failure is what makes you learn. Falling is hard for everyone. But the joy of getting up, of getting out of something bad and being able to go on living ... I think that's priceless compared to the pain of a fall."
Source: espn.co.uk