'It's incredible,' says Inaki Williams, and he's not just talking about the new LaLiga record he set last week for not missing a game in five-and-a-half years.
He's talking about the whole story. His story, one that begins with his parents crossing the Sahara desert to reach Spain as immigrants from Ghana, and ends with him establishing himself at the only club left in Europe that doesn't allow players born outside the region.
'It just makes me very proud to wear this shirt,' Williams says. 'And for people to feel proud that I am part of Athletic's history.'
Inaki Williams, pictured at Athletic Bilbao's training ground, has just established a LaLiga record by playing in his 203rd consecutive league game - a run of more than five years
The forward's Bilbao team-mates lift him into the air after he broke the record against Alaves
In one of the family pictures he shares with us, he is already in an Athletic Bilbao shirt aged three posing in front of a beaten up television perched on an industrial cable reel that's being used as a makeshift table.
Life was tough growing up but any hardships pale into insignificance when compared with what his mum Maria and his father Felix went through.
For many years they were reluctant to share too many details with him, believing the harrowing story would be, as the Spanish phrase has it 'like stones in the backpack' weighing him down as he tried to make it as a professional.
It was after he had made his debut at Athletic that his mum sat him down and told him the full story.
'It didn't completely surprise me when they told me, but hearing the story in detail still left me cold,' he says. 'It was the kind of thing you imagine only happens in films.
'They crossed the Sahara, in part on foot and in part on the back of a pick-up truck with forty other people.
Williams pictured in an Athletic Bilbao kit during his upbringing in the Basque country
He has now worn the Bilbao shirt with pride for almost a decade, playing over 300 games
'Many were left along the way; people they had to bury, people who were deported. There were thieves who stole their money, there were rapes, there was a lot of suffering.
'My mum said that if she'd known they would suffer so much on route she would never have set off. Lots of people are conned into it by traffickers who prey on their ignorance of what the journey will be like.
'They force people to pay up front and then halfway through the journey they say: 'get out, this is the last stop' and they leave you there stranded with nothing: you have no water, no food. There are kids there, old people, lots of women too.'
Inaki's mum was unaware of it at the time but she was in the early stages of pregnancy with him. 'We could have been abandoned along the way; we might not have made it,' he says.
He believes it was destiny that they did make it, and destiny again that once they had crossed the border at Melilla – the Spanish enclave north of Morocco – his parents were sent to the Basque region of Spain where he was born, making him eligible to play for Athletic Bilbao.
'Destiny wanted me to be born in Bilbao and now I am a player for Athletic, and my brother [Nico, eight years younger] plays for them too.
Williams' parents travelled from Ghana to the Spanish enclave of Melilla, north of Morocco, crossing the Sahara Desert either on foot or in a crowded pick-up truck
Knowing how difficult life had been for his parents, Williams was determined to make it as a footballer and hopes yet to play for Spain once again
'There are lots of people who make it to Europe and then don't have the good fortune, or don't find people who help them. We found people that helped us.'
He is named Inaki after a Spanish priest who baptised him and helped the family settle. And he's grateful to a lawyer who advised Maria and Felix after they had 'climbed the fence' at Melilla and were detained by Spain's Civil Guard before being given asylum.
Williams believes it is through great fortune his parents were settled in the Basque region with Bilbao only fielding players from there
The problems did not end there. 'This was 28 years ago,' says Iñaki. 'At that time in Spain there was not as much immigration.
'My parents took jobs that no one else wanted. My father worked as a shepherd, cleaning up on building sites, jobs that pay just enough to survive.'
In 2006 there was another life-changing decision to be made – one that could have taken Inaki to England.
'I was about 11 or 12 and things were very bad in Spain,' he recalls. 'The financial crisis started and my dad lost his job. My mum went some time without working too and we had to pay the rent and
