By Aleks Klosok, Amanda Davies, CNN
London (CNN) — When David Raya steps out onto the pristinely manicured grass of Budapest’s Puskás Aréna for Saturday’s Champions League Final, he’ll do so to the soundtrack of nearly 70,000 boisterous spectators.
The sparkling pinnacle of European soccer’s elite club competition will be a far cry from the bumpy pitches and concrete terracing of England’s non-league the goalkeeper once graced.
Twelve years ago, he was a Spanish teenager on a character-building loan spell with then fifth-tier Southport FC.
Fast forward to today, he’s one of the most influential keepers of his generation and stands on the brink of history as Arsenal chases a first ever Champions League crown. It’s the stuff of dreams.
What would David Raya the boy make of David Raya the man?
“He’ll be over the moon,” the Spanish keeper says with a smile speaking to CNN Sports ahead of the showdown with Paris Saint-Germain.
“He’ll just say everything has paid off. Every training, every call to home and every moment that you are by yourself.
“He’d be very proud of the journey that we have taken.”
Did he always have faith?
“Yes, always,” Raya proclaims. “I never lost the faith.”
Defying the odds
Raya’s journey to the upper echelons of the game has not been so much smooth and linear as uneven and circuitous.
It’s been one underpinned throughout by resilience, support and an unwavering belief in achieving his ultimate dream destination: the promised land of silverware.
With the blessing of his parents and despite not speaking a word of English, Raya pursued his “chance of a lifetime” by leaving his hometown of Barcelona as a 16-year-old to join Blackburn Rovers’ academy in 2012.
“(They’ve) always been there pushing me and trying to be a better person and a better player,” he says.
“It (was) a shock of culture. It’s tough, (but) I think it was tougher for my mom and dad than it was for me.”
It was as he was turning 19, when he dropped down the divisions to the then fifth-tier Merseyside club that he embarked on, as he describes it, “a point of maturity (and) one of the best moments of my career.”
Washing his own gloves and kit between matches, Raya talks first-hand of seeing the significance of winning matches as players balanced training with work.
“It helps to pay more bills and pay the mortgages,” he recalls.
“It gives you another perspective of football and how well treated we are when we are in a higher level.”
Premier League dream
But he too had to bide his time, recalling months when he’d go without playing a game on his return to Rovers.
Far from giving up, it hardened his mental resolve, and when his break with the Lancashire club and subsequently a trip to Brentford came, he didn’t think twice.
His journey to the promised land of the Premier League was finally achieved in the summer of 2021.
Not only did it mark the culmination of a childhood dream, it too was to signal the beginning of a new chapter in his remarkable rise in the game.
“When I came to England, I made a promise that I wasn’t going to move from England until I played in the Premier League, and I did,” Raya recalls.
“I didn’t take it for granted. I always want more. I always want to make that next step and