Inside Santi Cazorla’s romantic return to Real Oviedo at 38: Inspiring youngsters and playing for the minimum wage

Arsenal favourite Santi Cazorla is back at his boyhood club Real Oviedo at the age of 38. Adam Bate visits the city to speak to Cazorla himself and other key figures at the club to get the inside story behind the most romantic return of the season…

In the press room at Oviedo, the smiling figure of Santi Cazorla emerges. He has not been part of his team’s come-from-behind win over Eibar due to an injury. “A small thing. Nothing serious.” But he is central to everything at Real Oviedo right now. He is home.

At 38, Cazorla is back at the boyhood club that he was forced to leave as a teenager and he wants everyone to understand just what that means to him. “This is really, really important for me,” Cazorla tells Sky Sports. “It has been everything that I expected.”

Earlier in the afternoon, speaking to club president Martin Pelaez, he revealed the unseen influence of Cazorla on the victory later that day. It was the veteran’s insistence on playing for the minimum permitted salary that freed the club up to make other signings.

“The truth is that he helped us a lot,” Pelaez tells Sky Sports.

“From the first moment, he told us that the economics would not be a problem and that is how it was. This was Santi’s will. He did it out of affection, out of love for his city and his people. The fact that he did it gave us the salary space to bring in Santiago Colombatto.”