Northern Ireland🔴🤚☘️Footballers⚽️At Spanish🇪🇸Clubs

Spanish clubs he was at – Real Mallorca.
Northern Ireland caps – 63, 12 goals.

To Northern Ireland fans, Gerry Armstrong needs no introduction. Neither will Basque and Spain goalkeeper Luis Arconada ever forget him.

After Gerry’s exploits scoring the 1-0 winner against Spain in Valencia in 1982, big Gerry went and joined Real Mallorca a year later, becoming a popular figure there too.

Gerry tells some nuts stories from those days including a night on the rip with Diego Maradona (when Diego was at Barcelona) and a return to Valencia’s stadium where he scored again – this time in a 2-2 draw! Gerry had already scored 3 goals in Spain at the World Cup, where he won the UK countries golden boot with 3 goals, beating his team mate Billy Hamilton (Northern Ireland), Trevor Francis and Bryan Robson (England) and John Wark (Scotland).

Spanish clubs he was at – Celta Vigo.
Northern Ireland caps – 1 cap (v. Glentoran in a friendly). Was in many full squads but never brought on.

In 1987, Jim Hagan followed Gerry’s Spanish adventure when he joined newly promoted Spanish Primera Liga side Celta de Vigo. At the end of his first season in Spain, Celta had finished in the top half of the table and Hagan was named Overseas Player of the Year, despite competition from the likes of Gary Lineker. Jim beat legends like Hugo Sanchez and Gary Lineker to be Spain’s top import!! Hagan returned to Larne in August 1989 and also played for clubs in Canada, Hong Kong and Sweden as well as Birmingham City and a few other Northern Irish and English clubs.  Despite playing in our glory days of 1980 – 1986, Jim was never capped at full level except for a friendly v. Glentoran. He was in the squad a few times and the provisional squads for both World Cups in 1982 and 1986, but never made the cut.

3.Sean McCashin

Northern Ireland under 21 international Sean McCashin certainly had an interesting career…he was at double European Cup winners Nottingham Forest for 3 years and couldn’t break into the side so he ended up in Spain at Jerez Industrial in the Spanish Tercera Divison!

As part of a financial arrangement through “The Glenn Hoddle Academy”, they loaned players to Spanish fourth-tier club Jerez Industrial from 2008 to 2010! And as such their team was made up of mainly British and Irish players. Among the coaches that McCashin worked with in Spain was former Northern Ireland goalkeeping-coach, Dave Beasant! A couple of years there and he was back in Northern Ireland at Lisburn Distillery! You never know what is around the Chimney Corner! At under-21 level for Northern Ireland, he played against Scotland, Serbia and Hungary all in 3 different calendar years!

Spanish Clubs he was at – San Fulgencio, Santa Pola CF, CD Jávea.
Northern Ireland caps – Under 18 – 1, Under 21 – 2.
Guernsey caps – 6 caps, 2 goals.

Ryan-Zico Black is a wild one. The footballer who was capped by two different countries, was at clubs in 5 countries (2 of whom have won the World Cup – Spain and England), scored at the Maracana in Brazil, played for Gazza (in fact was Gazza’s first signing at Kettering Town), played against his namesake Zico and has a Da from Belfast with a link to Bobby Sands! He also played for the Guernsey club team as well as the Guernsey national team! Ryan-Zico now runs a football academy in Guernsey and also released a book called Zico: An Autobiography of a Non-League Footballer

There’s a cool 2024 Podcast interview with Ryan-Zico Black here –

Red Herrings

These lads didn’t quite make the cut…

1.Alberto Baldé

Alberto Balde has appeared on here before in Northern Irish Footballers Who Played For The Dominican Republic – he is a nuts one! He was born in Spain to a Guinea-Bissaun father and an Afro-Dominican mother. He then moved to Northern Ireland where he grew up! He never actually played club football in Spain and by the age of 16, he had 11 caps for Northern Ireland at 2 different youth levels. However, when Dominican Republic came a calling he went and won caps for them! He has been at Loughgall, Portadown, Pickering Town and Middlesbrough!

2.Luis Molowny

Yes Luis Molowny was Irish through his surname (originally Moloney) but he was born in Canary Islands in Spain and played in the Spanish League, but he only ever played internationally for Spain (1950 – 1955) and never for the IFA or FAI teams. It is not thought he had a Northern Irish link though, as his family was traced back to County Clare in the Republic of Ireland.

3.Arthur Johnson

This is a nuts one – On 13 May 1902, Irish lad Arthur Johnson went down in history as one of the eleven footballers who played in the first official game of Real Madrid at the 1902 Copa de la Coronación, which was also the first El Clásico, and it was he who scored the first competitive goal in Real Madrid’s history in a 3–1 loss to FC Barcelona! Sadly he was from Dublin, not Belfast so we cannot claim this one!

There are a few other Irish footballers who  played in Spain, but after research it was found they were all from Republic of Ireland including Kevin Moran, Anselmo García MacNulty, Michael Robinson, Ian Harte, Ryan Nolan, Kevin Toner, John Aldridge, Steve Finnan, Ryan Johansson and Caden McLoughlin.

Patrick O’Connell who played for Belfast Celtic, later managed FC Barcelona.