JOHANNESBURG – Day after day as a kid, Andres Iniesta had watched his family work. He was from a tiny village of Fuentealbilla, Spain, where his grandfather owned a small tavern called Bar Lujan.

Everyone from his grandmother to his aunts to his cousins, no matter how young, helped to keep the bar afloat. Even his younger sister Maribel would work. His own father would serve drinks at night after spending all day laboring in “the scaffolds.”

Just one family member was allowed to skip out on the family business – little Andres, whose love of (and acumen for) soccer at an early age was too great to cap.

“It was my best friend,” he said of the sport.

So everyone worked. And Andres played.

Now here he was, 26 years old and with all of Fuentealbilla, all of Spain, all of the world watching as he received a pass in the 116th minute of a scoreless World Cup final. This was the barkeep’s grandson, the construction worker’s kid, the product of the rural working class with a chance to deliver the greatest moment of Spanish soccer glory ever.

He corralled the ball with one touch and then blasted it to the right of the Netherlands’ brilliant goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg.

And with that, a most hard-fought, physical, intense World Cup final was all but over. Spain 1, the Netherlands 0 with Iniesta racing to the corner, ripping off his shirt and displaying a T-shirt with a message honoring another product of hardscrabble Spain.

“Dani Jarque always with us,” it said, a global tribute to a fallen friend who died at age 26 last August from a heart attack while talking on the phone with his girlfriend.

“I wanted to keep Dani with me and with the other teammates,” Iniesta said. “We wanted to pay tribute to him and we thought this was the best opportunity to do so.”

Spain is a gorgeous, exotic nation known for its festivals and beaches and tourism. Its national team prides itself on its precise style of crisp, accurate passing and creative attacks. It was the Netherlands, after all, who felt it needed to rough up the Spaniards to keep Sunday’s game close and offer itself a chance.

Spain is a beautiful country. Spain plays a beautiful game.

And this is why it’s so easy to miss the Andres Iniestas – and Dani Jarques – that make it hum. To not realize the immense economic difficulties its people are suffering through. To forget about the construction workers and family tavern owners and working class people that made it so great for so long.

Spain is about guts too, about tough guys living blue-collar dreams and trying to take their buddies along with them in any way they can. Even the ones who’ve passed away, even if it’s just a name scribbled on a T-shirt.

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Credits to yahoo sports

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