Gerónimo Rulli: ‘I never thought about United, De Gea – I hit it with all my soul’

Villarreal’s penalty shootout hero is thrilled to face Ronaldo tonight on his first trip to Manchester despite a spell with City

“‘Gero, don’t screw it up. Just stick it in.’” Gerónimo Rulli puts himself back on the spot and smiles. “And that’s what happened,” he says. All that and it came to this, to him. One shot that would be for ever. Well, two: the penalty he would take and the penalty he would face. It was 10-10 in an extraordinary shootout at the end of the Europa League meeting with Manchester United in May, the first final Villarreal had played, this team from the town of just 50,577, and history was calling him. So was the referee.

“I was walking away when he said: ‘Goalie, your turn,’” Rulli recalls. “‘Me? Are you sure?’ I’d lost count. ‘Are you sure there’s no one left?’ From the moment I took the ball, the key was not to think. In a shootout for a goalkeeper there’s a lot of time alone to think, for pressure to build. Your teammates are scoring all of their penalties, the responsibility grows, and then they depend solely on you. And that’s lovely.”

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