Girona, the new Leicester?
I watched a lot of La Liga matches last weekend. From dull, boring matches like Alaves-Las Palmas, to Betis-Real Madrid or Barcelona-Girona.
The bottom line is this: the rhythm in Spain is pretty low. The intensity is low. The championship has dropped a lot in terms of quality after the big superstars like Ronaldo, Neymar, Messi and Suarez left. Alaves, who looks like a second division team, would not do well in Premier League – I really don’t see it picking up ten points from thirty-eight games.
Betis are an interesting team, a mix of experience and youngsters full of enthusiasm, but unless you’re from Seville and a Betis fan, when you watch a Real Madrid game you do it too see Real Madrid.
And Real are playing stuttering and tired, running out of gas and becoming dependent on a youngster like Jude Bellingham, still in his first season in La Liga. That’s because Real’s engines – Kroos and Modric – are as old as they come. Ten years ago, they were, even if they just walked onto the pitch, among the top five midfielders in the world. Now it’s harder.
And Camavinga or Tchouameni are still not the players Kroos and Modric once were. And Real, let’s not forget, has no strikers. Diaz is an interesting footballer, but in a normal season at Real Madrid he would be somewhere on loan again.
Window of opportunity: a weaker, more predictable league.
And no new ideas are coming off the bench either. Ancelotti is a monument, but also a tired one. The wide players – Vinicius and Rodrygo – are big, young and capable of flying to the big trophies. But the impression is that this team, Real Madrid, if it wins the title, it will be because its big opponents, Atletico and Barcelona, are having even worse seasons than it.
The Girona surprise is no longer a surprise. They can hold on until the end, they proved it even against Barcelona (they gave Barcelona four away goals, not everyone can do that!).
It’s a miracle Girona, and the miracle is that at the moment they are the most spectacular team in Catalunya. Girona could even be the Leicester of a few seasons ago in England, capable of taking over a championship and dominating it outright.
But the Spanish championship is generally weaker and that makes it more predictable than in the past years. And that, every punter knows, is actually good news, a window of opportunity.
