The American legend who made Espanyol go viral with a beer in his hand

BarcelonaOn Friday afternoon, former American football player Justin James Watt posted a photo on social media showing a Burnley cap and an Espanyol cap, with the message "ready for the weekend." A rumor spread among the Espanyol fans, fueled by the stories From Instagram and JJ Watt's own tweets, the former athlete would watch Espanyol-Atlético de Madrid live. On Saturday, he sat in the box at Tottenham's stadium for Burnley's Premier League debut, and on Sunday, after flying to Barcelona in the morning on a private plane, he was seen at the Sagrada Família, on Wellington Street, next to Ciutadella Park, and at the blue and white training ground. where he met Alan Pace.

An hour and a half before the match, after asking where the blue and white supporters were gathering outside the stadium, JJ Watt turned up in the Riera neighbourhood of Cornellà, alone, to experience the run-up to Espanyol's La Liga debut like any other fan. His broad shoulders and height of almost two metres did not go unnoticed. Always with a beer in his hand, for a very good hour he wandered around the bars frequented by Espanyol's two main supporter groups, the Curva and the Juvenil, greeting each other and taking photos, smiling, with everyone who asked. He even shared the moment with a video on his X account, where he has 5.5 million followers. selfies with him they flooded the hashtag #rcde, and on Sunday night there was no other talk around the RCDE Stadium.

On the pitch, the club invited him onto the pitch and presented him with a shirt bearing his name and the number 99, the shirt he wore when he played. Afterward, from a private box, he witnessed a magnificent atmosphere and a colossal comeback, crowned by the image of Watt himself celebrating enthusiastically. Pere Milla's goal that caught the television signal and spread like wildfire in the United States, where it is a real celebrityWatt said goodbye to the fans, thanking them and promising to return to the Cornellà-El Prat stadium: "There will be many more beers before the match."

Who is JJ Watt and what does he do at Espanyol?

Currently, the former American athlete is one of the partners of Alan Pace, the new owner of Espanyol, who followed the match from the presidential box and who was seen before the start with his friends he made in the nineties in Barcelona, when he was studying for a master's degree at the IESE business school and playing American football at the current CE Júpiter field with the Búfals de Poblenou.

JJ Watt is a shareholder in the holding company Velocity Sports Limited (VSL), managed by Pace, which controls the blue and white club and English club Burnley. He retired just two and a half years ago, and he did so as an NFL legend. "He's on the ideal team of the last decade and one of the best defenders in the history of the competition. To put it mildly, we could compare him to Paolo Maldini," explains Rafa Cervera, who was general manager of the Barcelona Dragons and worked for the NFL for over a decade.

The son of a firefighter father and the older brother of TJ Watt, "one of the current stars of the NFL," the former Houston Texans and Arizona Cardinals player initially made a living as a pizza delivery boy at the Pizza Hut in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, because there was no top-tier university. Years later, JJ Watt burst onto the scene in the NFL and became "a reference in the United States for what he did on and off the field," according to Cervera. His outgoing nature is complemented by a well-known spirit of solidarity. "In 2017, he led the fundraising effort for those affected by Hurricane Harvey, that devastated Texas, and raised more than 40 million dollars. The competition gave him the Walter Payton Award, an award given to the player who contributes the most to the community," reveals this NFL expert.

In addition, Watt is a sports fanatic and is married to former soccer player Kealia Watt, a North American international. Since the N' was announced, he has tweeted about the blue and white club and championed it on the main sports programs in his country, and has given the Catalan club a popularity in the United States that it had never had before.