When a teenage David Raya pulled on his gloves at Moss Rose — home of National League side Macclesfield Town — in September 2014, the notion that he would one day contest a Champions League final seemed laughable. Fewer than 1,500 supporters were present that afternoon as his Southport side fell 3-0, and the 19-year-old Spanish goalkeeper left without a single clean sheet to his name.

Yet on Saturday, Raya will line up between the sticks for Arsenal as they face holders Paris St-Germain in Budapest, chasing the club's first-ever Champions League title. At 30, he is set to become only the third player in history to travel from non-league football all the way to a Champions League final.

An exclusive club

The only others to have achieved that feat are full-back Steve Finnan — who won the 2005 title with Liverpool after playing for Welling United in the National League — and centre-back Chris Smalling, who turned out for Maidstone before appearing as an unused substitute in Manchester United's defeat to Barcelona in the 2011 final.

Raya's path was every bit as improbable. Until the age of 16, he was a youth-team goalkeeper at Cornella, a Third Division club on the outskirts of Barcelona, where he was not even first choice. A club partnership between Cornella and Blackburn Rovers brought him to Lancashire in 2012 — the very season Blackburn were relegated from the Premier League — only to find himself fourth in the pecking order behind Paul Robinson, Jake Kean, and Simon Eastwood.

The non-league education

With first-team football beyond his reach at Blackburn, Raya took a bold step and dropped three further divisions to join struggling fifth-tier side Southport on a four-month loan. Paul Carden, Southport's former assistant manager, remembers a determined young player who was anything but comfortable — but unwilling to shy away from the challenge.