Why Upton Park is home from home for West Ham goalkeeper Adrian

Raised in a working-class area of Seville, Spaniard feels at ease in the East End. Ahead of today’s derby with Chelsea, humble keeper tells Simon Hart how he loves the atmosphere at the Boleyn Ground – and travelling there by Tube

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Adrian San Miguel del Castillo is sitting in a hotel bar in Canary Wharf talking about the weather. Outside it is wet and windy and the rain, it turns out, has even followed him to Seville on his last couple of trips home to visit family. “They keep complaining that I bring the weather with me,” he smiles.

Were it not for the rain, it would be difficult to find a single cloud on the horizon right now for the West Ham United goalkeeper, better known simply as Adrian. Not only do his team sit fourth in the table after their best start to a Premier League season, but he has a new contract freshly signed and has a new baby – his first – arriving early in the new year.

More immediately, there is the prospect of a home derby with Chelsea to look forward to this afternoon. West Ham may have won at Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City this season but they have been less convincing at Upton Park and Adrian hopes they can put that right today. “At home the fans deserve some big matches like we’ve produced away from home and with it being a derby, it would be great to beat Chelsea,” he says.

The derby that Adrian grew up with was the one in Seville, pitting his beloved Real Betis, the working-class club, against their wealthier neighbours, Sevilla. Not a dissimilar set up to today’s match. It is often suggested that the surfeit of foreign players in the Premier League have diluted derby-day passions but the 28-year-old knows just how West Ham supporters will be feeling. “It’s obvious that it’s different for me because I’m from Seville and it’s not the same as a derby in the city where I was born and grew up but because of that I put myself in the situation of our fans now. My dad used to take me when I was little and I used to get upset when we lost.”

What today will bring – win, lose or draw – is one of the last big atmospheres at Upton Park. Next season it will be the Olympic Stadium that Chelsea visit. Adrian is excited about the future at a venue he can see from his Canary Wharf flat but equally will miss the place he has learned to call home. “Upton Park is a historic stadium and typically English. There’s a warmth and you feel the people close up to you. When the crowd get going, you feel it. But the Olympic Stadium is a spectacular stadium. I’ve been a few times and I think it’s going to be a big step and a move that will modernise the club and help us really compete against other clubs.”

If the prospect of playing there was a factor in his signing his new two-year deal, it was certainly not the only one. “I have an important role in the team and when a footballer feels important, that’s the best thing,” he explains. “My family and my wife are happy for me to be here, and I think wherever I go in the end there’s a part of my heart that will stay at West Ham.”

There is sincerity in these words, expressed in his Andalusian Spanish, and what comes across most from time spent with Adrian is his humility. He and his wife Tamara are two down-to-earth sevillanos who travel around London by Tube and fly home with Ryanair. “I couldn’t take the metro in Seville because everybody would be on top of me, taking photos and in five minutes it would be on social media. But I consider myself just a normal person so why not take the Underground when you can and it’s much faster than driving?

“I’ve always been the same person, since I started at Betis as I am now,” he adds. “My family and friends are the same and I consider myself a humble person. Apart from football you have to remember you’re a human being and when this is over you have to carry on being a human being. You can’t look down on people. Perhaps there are some footballers who are like that but everyone’s different.”

Adrian may be grounded off the pitch, but on it his team are flying. Slaven Bilic’s men already have more away wins – four – than in the whole of last season. How does he explain it? “We’ve played with less pressure and more freedom than at home. We’re strong in defence as we’ve always been but now have a good attack with so much variety.

“The team has the defensive work that Sam [Allardyce] instilled and we’ve added the new attacking players and the philosophy that Bilic has, to try to keep possession, with quick attacks but always with the ball. I think the team is more competitive, more complete across the pitch and we’ve shown it in these early matches.”

The impact of Frenchman Dimitri Payet must also be mentioned. “He has brought some magic. He has something different, he is not an ordinary footballer. He can play a pass where nobody sees one, or have a shot where nobody would expect it. He’s the kind of footballer who brings a touch of class, and when you play with good footballers, you all improve.”


 Adrian celebrates a goal at Manchester City
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Adrian’s own improvement must be put in the context of the many seasons he spent on the bench at Betis. He actually had to wait until he was 25 for his debut for the club he had joined as an 11-year-old. Such has been his development in England, where he arrived after just one season of regular La Liga football, that he was included in the initial 40-man provisional squad for Spain’s final Euro 2016 qualifiers. “In the end he [Vicente del Bosque] decided to choose [Iker] Casillas, [David] De Gea, and Sergio Rico, but I am not going to give up and I will keep working to have the opportunity.”

It is no surprise that word of his excellence has reached Spain. When West Ham won at the Etihad last month, after withstanding a second-half siege, he got back to the dressing room and found on his phone “about 200 messages. I had messages from a load of people I’ve not spoken to for years but they saw the match”. For Adrian that victory recalled the night at Chelsea in January last year when West Ham survived 39 goal attempts to grab a 0-0 draw – and he came of age in this country with a late, low stop from Frank Lampard. “It was the last minute, with the team practically dead on their feet. We couldn’t defend any more and it kept us alive.”

The winning penalty he scored in last season’s FA Cup shootout against Everton enhanced his folk-hero status with Hammers fans but there have been lows, too. Wayne Rooney beating him from 45 yards last year was a lesson that in England players will shoot from anywhere. As for his red card against Leicester in August – when, upfield for a last-minute corner, he kicked Jamie Vardy as he attempted to strike a falling ball – that led his 90-year-old grandfather, on the phone from Seville, to chide him for leaving his own half. “It was an accident. I tried to kick the ball and I don’t have eyes in the back of my head,” he says ruefully.

Happily he has acquired the mental strength to handle the setbacks. “When you are young perhaps you don’t enjoy being a goalkeeper because you think every goal is your fault. I can remember goals going in against me when I was 11 or 12 and I would actually cry. In matches, things happen, mistakes happen and what I do is try to always think about a good save I’ve made in the same game or in a past match. You have to be strong mentally and be ready for anything to happen – to be a hero as well as a villain.”

To join the West Ham new stadium priority list for 2016-17 Season Tickets, visit whufc.com/Priority

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My other life - studying

I like to study and have a sports science degree from the University of Seville. It took seven or eight years because it was difficult doing it at the same time as my football.

After my Betis debut it was hard to go to class because everybody was asking for autographs and photos. Everybody thought I was now somebody else, although I was still the same Adrian as when I’d started five years earlier.