The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful: | OneFootball

A round-up of some of La Liga’s most intriguing storylines across the week, traversing through the good, the bad and something beautiful.

The Good: The adopted father of Getafe

Having already paid tribute to Luis Castro’s Levantine miracle, our focus falls upon the unpopular Southern Madrid neighbourhood of Getafe. If Rayo have come up with the slightly ironic chant of ‘F***ing Rayo’ in order to reject the idea that they are simply a novelty addition to football’s elite, there is no such danger of Getafe drawing patronising affection. Often, parallels in British media are drawn with Tony Pulis’ Stoke City from late 2000s, a shorthand for a team that are not only physical and difficult to play against, but take some Schadenfreude in the discomfort of their visitors.

Where any comparison fails with Bordalas’ astonishing feats is that Pulis’ Stoke spent more in the first transfer window they came up to the Premier League than Getafe have in Bordalas’ entire second spell. Over that period, Getafe have made a €38m profit, and of the players that have cost Los Azulones a transfer fee, only Davinchi (€600k), Diego Rico (€1.5m) and back-up goalkeeper Jiri Letacek (€2m) are still at the club. As Bordalas put it, it was a miracle for this side even to be staying up, to be comfortable with several games to go, was beyond contemplation just four months ago. To be in Europe is a glitch in the matrix.

Tint Bordalas’ glasses, put him in an overcoat. Perhaps you can picture him dodging all those bullets, after all, Getafe conceded just 38 goals all season, bettered only by Real Madrid and Barcelona. The only side to score less than their 32 were bottom side Real Oviedo. Extracting 15 wins from that tally must be a statistical anomaly. More Bordalas would be for the bullets just to ping off the steely forces he sends out to tear down your game plan. On an individual occasion, there is admittedly little fun in watching Getafe strangle the life out of some games, removing the oxygen from an opponent, simply trying to raise the tempo, to find rhythm – to make something happen.

Having watched this happen on numerous occasions though, there is a sickly fascination in it. Forgive the slinking, drawn out metaphor, but between the constricting of opponents, and the portrayal of Getafe as La Liga’s villains, just as Osasuna found on Saturday, it’s hard to avoid those serpentine coils. To tune into Getafe is to switch from your usual football match onto a National Geographic documentary. Centuries of predatory instinct honed, a combination of senses detect the movement. Wherever it is the opposition are finding that half-yard to cause Getafe problems, the entire body of blue reacts to clamp down on it.

For all that their modus operandi may be cold-blooded, Getafe was bathed in warmth at the final whistle after they secured 7th and a Conference League spot, a fourth trip into Europe and a second at the hand of Bordalas. Fans flooded onto the pitch, players flooded the press room, all to sing as loud and heartily as they could muster: “Bordalas, I love you.” Los Azulones may have the twinkle-toed Luis Milla, the militant Djene Dakonam, or the Martin Satriano blunderbus up front, but nobody is under any illusions that it is captain Bordalas that tells the wind which way to blow and when to put the sails up. The day before EuroGeta returned, Bordalas was officially named an adopted son of the city. Really, he should be the adopted father – papa to those familiar with him.

The Bad: An enormous emptyness

This should not have happened. “Girona deserve to be in La Liga” said Michel Sanchez after they drove too close to the edge and plummeted to Segunda. With one wheel spinning in the air, it looked like Thomas Lemar had was about to get Girona back on firm ground, when he cracked the underside of the bar with 10 minutes to go. As pointed out by Sid Lowe on TSFP, it felt like the stage was set for Cristhian Stuani to slay the dragon again as he has so many times before.

The Girona captain, 39, has been struggling for fitness for weeks though, and rather than coming on after Lemar for the final assault, he had been sent on at half-time. After Artem Dovbyk left two summers ago, Sporting Director Quique Carcel took two swings and missed with both Bojan Miovski and Abel Ruiz. It should have been a warning sign that Stuani had to save Girona last year. Compare Stuani to his contemporaries: Oscar Trejo, Iago Aspas, Dani Parejo, Santi Cazorla. None were carrying the weight of expectation on their shoulders come the moment of truth, rather adding their craft and character to the squad.

To be just with Carcel, Vladyslav Vanat was a hit with 10 goals in his 29 appearances. Yet when he went down injured in April, Girona failed to win any of their remaining eight games, picking up just four points. The Catalans scored twice just once in that run, and the result was a nine-point swing between safety and Girona, one they were on the wrong side of. Viktor Tsygankov took a turn at nine, as did Azzedine Ounahi, and teenage loanee Claudio Echeverri, but not Ruiz.

Michel was left “feeling guilty and responsible” for “failing his people” afterwards. Two days later, he posted on Twitter/X that the sadness and the emptyness were enormous. Had La Liga gone on another two weeks, Girona might have saved themselves, had Vanat been fit two more weeks, had Lemar’s thunderbolt gone in off the bar… The reason this relegation will be so hard for Michel to wash off, for Girona to overcome, is because they were good enough to stay up. A summation of very small twists have sent Girona skidding out of La Liga, and there’s no proper explanation for it.

The Beautiful: Dennis Bergkamp’s adopted son

Tucked away in the depths of the games that did not matter much on Matchday 38, is an irresistible gleaming jewel. There is something special about watching footballers with freedom, with a desire not just to win but to remind us how supremely in control they are of the ball, how even the less heralded names possess a modicum of genius that those paying to watch them dream of.

How many children have dreamed of pulling off that magical Dennis Bergkamp turn against Newcastle United? One of them was a 33-year-old from the deep interior of Catalonia, where the only tourists in town are lost. When the ball is played into Milla with Igor Zubeldia behind him and Benat Turrientes ready to smother his control away from goal, the Espanyol forward pulls off a marvellous turn.

His only real misfortune is that there were still other defenders around to prevent him from getting a strike off and mailing away his goal of the season contender. As it is, he had the presence of mind to split two more defenders with his ball across for Roberto Fernandez to convert, and Milla will have to address the DVD to the assist of the season office instead.