Yelko Pino + Swindon Town: The transfer that never happened

Massimo Luongo, Nathan Byrne, Wes Foderingham, Andy Williams, and Ben Gladwin followed the departing loanees Sam Ricketts, Louis Thompson, Jack Stephens, and Harry Toffolo out of the door. Nine players that had made up the backbone of Town’s best team of the 21st Century were plucked away in an instant. It was the last dance, not the start of another run.

Beckford scores for Preston in the playoff final (Image: Adver archive)

As Swindon looked to rebuild from a playoff final defeat, they brought in a Spanish Under-19 international to fill the void, who had been coached by Luis de la Fuente and played alongside Marco Asensio and Marcos Llorente.

Only for Yelko Pino to never make a competitive appearance.

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It had been a good day's work at Adver Towers. Feet up, a glass of whiskey, and a long draw on a cigarette as a meaty file hit the desk with a thud.

“You’re the only man for the job,” said the commissioner. “Nobody else can crack the case. They simply don’t have the skills.”

“Milan Misun was a year ago,” I retorted. “I’m too old for this stuff.”

“I have had the mayor on the phone, you have 48 hours” came the response. I stared blankly back. His Carlo Ancelotti eyebrow raise cut through the noir scene like a katana and I was out of my Swindon detective retirement.

Somebody simply had to figure out how an exciting Celta Vigo youngster spent six months traipsing around Beversbrook, a development game against Bristol Rovers the closest he came to the County Ground turf muddying his boots.

Learning from my mentor Charlie Kelly, I got the pens out and set about putting together my crime board.

(Image: Newsquest)

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“Having been so deflated to lose and lose the way we did,” reflected Yaser Kasim on the aftermath of Swindon’s 4-0 playoff final defeat to Preston, “It didn’t necessarily put us in good stead for the next season. We were still so young, and we didn’t see the bigger picture.

“But also, we saw the team evaporate with players leaving and not necessarily the same calibre of players coming in. We were, I think the word would be ‘confused’, we didn’t know what was happening other than individually with some of us wanting to get our moves.

“I know a lot more about the business now and the biggest issue with Swindon was that they never owned their stadium or their training ground, so your only assets are your players. If you want to have a business where you are making money, then you have to sell your players because they are your assets. If you have a solid business backed by assets, then you can push on and we didn’t do that. All we had was the coach and the players, but you can only work with what you have and that takes time if you don’t have the players that can step up.

Kasim plays a pass against Cheltenham (Image: Dave Evans)

“Especially when we had had a season like we did, that feeling of deflation lingered and that is what we saw from up top through to the kit men and it just vibrated through the team.”

It was through to September and after a quick start on the pitch, the results took a turn as the queue for the treatment table started to resemble a restaurant that had become a trend on TikTok. This led to Swindon bringing in loan players to fill the holes, meaning they had more than they could put in a matchday squad when everyone was fit.

On September 9, out of the blue, Celta Vigo announced that the promising young star, Pino, had joined Swindon on loan. Great, another technical talent for Mark Cooper to maximise like he had so many others. But bizarrely, Swindon never announced the move themselves.

Whilst Pino was of huge interest to Swindon and negotiations had happened, Lee Power told BBC Wiltshire that he was not going to join until January. Despite this, the Spanish midfielder came to Swindon and was training with Town, even being revealed to have featured during a development game against Bristol Rovers.

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My enquiries were proving troublesome. Several weeks of emails and messages to players who had played alongside Pino were not getting me any closer to finding out what had happened. Aussie Rules legend and current Taunton Town player Tom Smith played in that development game, but the media team at the Somerset club said he couldn’t remember having played with him. Nor could many others involved that day. Attempts to contact people from all levels of the club brought me down more dead ends than Park South.

But this was not a deterrent, the Misun project lasted three months before Andrew Fitton kindly trawled through his old email server for me. Kasim, who you have already heard from, remembered a little but not much and provided a bit more context.

Then I realised that I had spent too long looking at Luke Williams players and had adopted their approach when surely a punt down the middle could get me the answers. And so, with an email drafted with the assistance of my Spanish-speaking brother, Alex, Pontevedra CF were contacted and before long…

Pino speaks to The Adver over Zoom (Image: Newsquest)

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“I was a very young footballer taking my first steps in my career and the opportunity came up to move to England, a country that loves football,” said Pino. “I thought this was a good option to grow and develop into a better player. I came to the club with a lot of excitement, being in a new country and at a new club.”

Having initially been excited about the possibility of a trip to Spain’s west coast before remembering I instead had to go to Barrow, with the help of Acklam the Elder as a translator and the wonderful cooperation of Pontevedra’s media team, I was in a Zoom call with Pino himself.

Despite suggestions of the opposite at the time, Pino had joined Town that September and stayed with the club for several months.

“I remember him a little bit and the situation being a bit strange,” said Kasim on his memories of the then-19-year-old. “He came in and he wasn’t an English speaker. Coming from abroad to the EFL is different to the Premier League and we were trying to understand what his position within the club was, how he got there, and I only really remember him playing in the development games.”

The talk at the time was that Pino had had difficulties with Celta Vigo and couldn’t secure a loan move in Spain before their window closed, leading to him arriving at the County Ground as loan moves were still permitted outside of transfer windows.

Pino speaks with Robert at The Den (Image: Adver archive)

“I knew that a few months before the club had been fighting for promotion to the Championship and had been in the playoffs,” said Pino. “Which is why it was an appealing club to come to. I was given a lot of support by the first manager [Mark Cooper], who showed an intention to use me as part of the first team but then when he was replaced the new manager didn’t feel like he could trust me to play.

“The second manager [Martin Ling] never told me why or gave me any explanation, I assume that he just didn’t like my style of play or that he simply thought my teammates were better.

“In the first few months, I had every intention of being part of the squad and making an impact, but it was impossible for me to play and afterwards [when I could play] it was a new manager who didn’t trust me on the pitch. December was a really tough time for me because I wasn’t getting any minutes, and I knew that I had to change club.”

After leaving home hoping to follow on from the success Town had achieved with a technical midfield the previous season, Pino had been left in the cold with no real explanation of what was going on. The problem was that nobody else had any clear idea either. Despite him having signed and spent time with the group without playing, Power continued to talk about him joining once the January window opened, but that never came.

Power maintained the plan was for him to join in January (Image: Dave Evans)

Kasim empathised with what was happening with Pino and felt it was an example of the problems that Swindon were having across the season.

“We needed more experience, I should have given a little bit more of that as well and I would be able to provide more of it now. It creates some division in the changing room because you want results. Results weren’t happening and you have got a coach where you know the philosophy is right but it is not working and so we start questioning ourselves because you don’t have a squad that is competitive enough to compete every week.

“Football is simple but to get it to be simple is very difficult. The way we had Nathan Thompson bring the ball out from the back, he would dribble it, and I would come and sit, so if he couldn’t find the forward pass then he would find me and I’d find the forward pass. If I can’t find the forward pass, then we will go side-to-side until we can.

“It is very simple but if you don’t have the ability to move the ball forwards then what are you doing bringing somebody in when you can’t find somebody in the eight position? It felt like one or two could do it and the rest couldn’t and you are trying to play the same style [as before] but we couldn’t.

“I remember he [Pino] had good technical ability, he was aware, and he would do well in training. If the team was stable and he came in, then he would do well, but he didn’t have that.”

As January dragged on, there was no announcement. BBC Wiltshire never understood that Swindon were signing the youngster on loan from Celta Vigo. Then all of a sudden, it was announced he had moved to Queens Park Rangers in the Championship, but he didn’t play there either.

“Because of the lack of minutes,” said Pino, “I had to look for another solution. The manager didn’t have confidence in me although I was happy to stay in Swindon. I liked the countryside, and the people were nice but in order to continue growing as a player I had to try to play more often.

“[At QPR] It wasn’t very simple; I couldn’t play all the games because of the terms of my contract that I had signed. I was really young and didn’t really understand the situation. The only thing that I could think to do was to return to Spain to start a new chapter.”

Despite the strange goings on of that year, Pino remembers his time in Swindon fondly and even if he wasn’t getting it from the club, some of the players did help him to adapt to the strange town with lots of roundabouts.

Branco celebrates scoring at Port Vale (Image: Dave Evans)

“Yes [The other players did help me],” he said. “I remember a Brazilian player, Rafa Rossi Branco and Ben Gladwin. We had a really good group of players and good footballers too.

"I lived alone in Swindon, I remember the weather was very wet and cloudy and different to Spain but I settled in well. I often used to go to a Brazilian place near the Holiday Inn, which did good food and the town centre was a nice place, I was happy to live there [Swindon].”

And that was it. One very strange season for the Galician teenager in England ended without him playing for two different clubs but not a single competitive game.

Town survived in 15th before the downward spiral continued the following year. Having been on the porch of the Championship two years before, Swindon ended up stumbling over the threshold into League Two.