Antoine Griezmann did not travel to Elche for Saturday’s La Liga match.

With an eye to the second leg of Real Sociedad’s Champions League playoff tie with Lyon only four days away, Txuri-urdin manager Jagoba Arrasate opted to leave the 22-year-old in San Sebastian while he and the team travelled 700 kilometres south to the Mediterranean.

Back in Basque country Griezmann, the hero of the first leg in France, followed the proceedings closely.

“That’s (Carlos Vela)!” the winger tweeted after his Mexican teammate notched a 74th-minute equalizer. “Derechazoooo!” he added — a bull-fighting term implying a blow had been struck.

Last Tuesday it was Griezmann, himself, who had struck the blow against Lyon.

Waiting in the box as Vela chased down a loose ball on the left, the former France underage international leapt into the air to meet the resulting cross, turning his body while in flight and scissoring a spectacular shot from 16 yards that left Lyon goalkeeper Antony Lopez stuck to the spot and the partisan crowd at the Stade Gerland silent in awe.

“Griezmann’s goal has given us wings,” exclaimed Sociedad forward Haris Seferovic after the match, a 2-0 win. “Now we must defend this lead at the Anoeta.”

Boy from Bourgogne

Born in a small city in Bourgogne in central France, Griezmann broke into the senior Real Sociedad squad in 2009 and helped the side to the Segunda championship and promotion to La Liga during his first professional season.

The following summer he was part of the France U-19 team that won that age category’s European Championship in Caen, and his pair of goals and exceptional, technical play earned him a spot on the tournament all-star squad, alongside the likes of Francis Coquelin, Gueida Fofana and Thiago Alcantara.

A year later he scored the only goal in a FIFA U-20 World Cup Round of 16 encounter with Ecuador in Colombia, and against Lyon on Tuesday he came up against several of his former teammates from the France side that came fourth in that tournament, among them Fofana, Clement Grenier and Alexandre Lacazette.

Griezmann, incidentally, grew up supporting Lyon, which is why there was something of an emotional element to his hand in perhaps eliminating the French giants from the competition he saw them enjoy some success in during the middle part of the last decade.

“I used to come to Champions League matches (at the Gerland) with my father,” he said the day before the contest. “The moment I stepped on the Stade Gerland pitch (for training) I felt a lot of emotions. I even pointed out in the stands where I used to sit.”

No doubt the people who now use those seats will have had his return imprinted in their minds.

Defying the odds

Griezmann’s Twitter profile includes an image of him surrounded by children representing the Real Sociedad Foundation. Around nine or 10 years old, many of them have likely harboured dreams of one day putting on the Txuri-urdin shirt and representing their favourite club at the Anoeta.

Few, if any, of them will end up doing so, but in Griezmann they have an ally who knows what it’s like to defy the odds.

From the time he was eight-years-old Griezmann tried desperately to earn a place in one of France’s youth academies. But as he was considered weak and slight, he was repeatedly overlooked until a fateful match in 2005 against Camp des Loges — the Paris Saint-Germain academy.

Training with the Montpellier youngsters at the time, Griezmann caught the eye of some Real Sociedad scouts and was offered a contract. He still had to convince his parents to sanction his move to Spain, but after they relented he was provided room and board by Sociedad’s French scout and continued to cross the border to go to school in nearby Bayonne.

Four years later he made his professional debut for the club and appeared in 40 matches that first season, scoring six goals.

Last term Griezmann bagged a career-high 10 goals in La Liga and was a major factor in Sociedad’s surprising run to fourth in the table and a berth in the Champions League playoffs. He created 37 scoring opportunities over the course of the 2012-13 season, helped out in defence and placed more than half of his shots on target.

Still, with the likes of Vela, Inigo Martinez and Asier Illarramendi garnering the most credit for Sociedad’s exceptional campaign, Griezmann operated in near obscurity.

He won’t be any longer.

His spectacular strike against Lyon in Europe’s most prestigious club competition showed the world what followers of Real Sociedad have known for some time: that Griezmann is a rare talent with a heartening story; that a youngster deemed too frail for professional football can become one of the better wingers on the continent.

Jerrad Peters is a Winnipeg-based writer. Follow him on Twitter.