Paulo Gazzaniga’s historic hat-trick leaves Athletic to pay the penalty | Sid Lowe

“I don’t remember a game like it,” Paulo Gazzaniga said. And nor does anyone else. Nobody had done done what he had just done: not his brother Gianfranco, not his dad Daniel, goalkeepers like him, not anyone, not here.

“Incredible,” Michel Sánchez called it; Ernesto Valverde went for “farcical”. When Girona and Athletic’s coaches embraced at the end of a sunny Sunday afternoon, the last of 27 shots having finally settled a chaotic game in Catalonia, a 99th-minute winner from the best striker Montilivi has seen still overshadowed by three that didn’t go in, Valverde wore a shrug and a smile that said silly, innit. Which is was. It was also brilliant. And bad. And fun, which football’s meant to be.

Historic, too. “This can’t happen in primera,” Iñaki Williams said but it had, and for the first time ever. There were 13,396 people to witness it, a story they’ll tell until the end of time, still laughing when they do just like they were still laughing when they left Montilivi. Three times Carlos del Cerro Grande called from the VAR room 712km away, three times Athletic went to the spot, three different men taking three different penalties. Paulo Gazzaniga saved them all. The goalkeeper whose first professional appearance was for Gillingham in front of 2,466 people at Underhill became the only man in La Liga history to stop three penalties in one day – or 29 minutes and 30 seconds, to be precise.

“Athletic shot themselves in the foot,” one headline said but if they had tried, he would have saved that too. It’s only his team’s shots he doesn’t stop. Although he saved a penalty against Feyenoord in midweek, three of the four Gazzaniga has conceded in the Champions League have been own goals. Then, where Alex Berenguer, Williams and Ander Herrera failed, Cristhian Stuani didn’t and, instead of another Athletic victory, a fourth in five taking them into third, Girona won 2-1, their first in five. “We didn’t win because of something unusual,” Herrera insisted, entirely incorrectly. “Thank God …” Michel said afterwards, pausing to correct himself. “Well, thank Gazzaniga.”

“We needed this,” the man himself said, and maybe he had too. Girona had not won in six, losing twice in four league games and beaten in both of their Champions League matches, that feeling of Season After Syndrome hard to escape. Last year’s great revelation, they had competed for the title more than anyone else had and eventually reached Europe for the first time, qualifying for the Champions League. Then what had happened was what tends to happen to great revelations. Aleix García, their best midfielder and arguably Spain’s too, left for Leverkusen. Artem Dovbyk, La Liga’s top scorer, went to Rome. And Savinho, whose appearance was what made coach Michel think it was all possible in the first place, was a €40m signing for Manchester City, whose ownership group already owned him.

If there was an inevitability about that, there was a weird inevitability about all this too, a sense that if it wasn’t for bad luck they wouldn’t have no luck at all. They had played reasonably well, a team with 11 new players being rebuilt by a coach in whom they trust, but competing in Europe and La Liga felt like a step too far and it just wasn’t happening, fortune deserting them. They had lost in the last minute at the Parc des Princes. Against Feyenoord, they had scored two own goals, gifted another, had one of their own ruled out, missed a penalty and seen Viktor Tsygankov taken off, joining Oriol Romeu and Daley Blind on the injury list. At Valencia, where they had been beaten 2-0, both goals had been long shots that went in off Juanpe. In short, five of the last seven they had conceded had been own goals.

None were more painful than the one Gazzaniga scored. A symbol of what Girona have done over the last few years, signed from Fulham in the Championship where he had become third-choice goalkeeper, the kid who left Murphy, Argentina, at 15, was released by Valencia, went to Gillingham, Southampton and Spurs, mostly as a back-up, and made the second most saves in Spain last season, he played a key part in leading them to the Champions League. On their opening night, he made a dreadful error against PSG, a harmless enough ball escaping him and deflecting into the net in the last minute.

At the end of Sunday’s win, Michel admitted he had even been tempted to rotate. In the summer, they had signed Pau López, after all. “That was more for emotional, mental reasons than anything else,” the coach said. “But in the end I gave Gazzaniga continuity because I think he deserves it; he’s always had that character to be able to compete in good times and bad.”

The rest is history. This isn’t the first time a goalkeeper has made three penalty saves in a game. Dunfermline have a bit of a thing for it, for a start, both in their favour and against them – step forward Cammy Bell and Deniz Mehmet. Jean-Francois Gillet did it in Belgium too. And everyone remembers Martín Palermo missing three. It’s not even the first time Gazzaniga has completed a glorious triple – just look at this with dog, pig and pony – and post-game he said “when you’re a goalkeeper facing a penalty you always expect to save it”. But no one had done it in La Liga – not even if you call this two plus one, pedants – and even he could not have imagined this. No one could, not even with Athletic having missed half of their last 10. “We’re the team that won the Copa del Rey final on penalties,” Valverde said afterwards, “don’t ask me how.”

It all started in in the 27th minute when referee Juan Luis Pulido Santana was called to the VAR screen. Berenguer, who scored the penalty that took them to their first trophy in 40 years, asked to take it. “He was confident and he was the one that won it,” Williams reasoned. The penalty was struck so badly Gazzaniga didn’t even have to move far to save it. That meant that at half-time, the score was 1-1. Yáser Asprilla had opened the scoring thanks to Miguel Gutiérrez’s inspired moment of walking away from the ball whistling, letting a cross go all the way through and into the net. Oihen Sancet had then finished off Berenguer’s gorgeous scooped pass just before the break. In the dressing room, Valverde told his players that if there was another penalty, Williams should take it.

So when they got another one, again given by VAR, on 55 minutes, he did. “I was calm. I was clear that I was going down the middle: I knew the goalkeeper would move,” Williams said. But he didn’t, not much, and nor, more importantly, did the ball. “It was a technical error; the ball didn’t lift it,” he said. Gazzaniga got to his feet and rolled the ball out, the still place cheering, the game continuing, when another call brought them back again, the celebrations replaced by chants: “Hands up, it’s a robbery!” Down in Las Rozas, they had spotted Gazzaniga off his line. Athletic were given another chance. “We hadn’t foreseen a third taker,” Herrera admitted – it should have been Sancet but he had been taken off injured – so he asked for it. And Gazzaniga saved from him too, everyone falling about and appealing for penalties every time anyone moved, singing “referee, give another” until eventually he did.

The shot had been almost as bad as Williams’ effort. “Sometimes things come off well and sometimes they don’t,” Herrera said. “I’ve taken maybe 50 penalties and that has never happened, the ball going so low. In 16 years, this is the first time I’ve seen this happen.” In over 100 years, it was the first time anyone had, history made.

History hurt too. This, as one Bilbao-based newspaper put it, “was a masters in how not to take a penalty”. “Misery from 11 metres,” another headline called it; Athletic had “committed hara kiri”. Over on the bench, Valverde had a pen in his hand, Jon Rivas in El País imagining him wanting to plunge it into the first person to go by, or write a letter of resignation there and then. But it was Williams who took it hardest, the opportunity to put his team into the lead and on course for another vital victory lost. “I feel responsible for us not winning; this just can’t happen,” he said. Only it can and it had. Sunk by the trauma of it all, it was going to get even worse when, called by the VAR, on 98 minutes and 17 seconds Stuani scored the winner.

With a penalty.