Here we go again: Saturday night’s championship decider at the Santiago Bernabéu. Eighty-five thousand tickets are already gone, history will be made. First against second, they have 100 goals between them, the rest are far behind. The club that is undefeated at home, has the most points in Europe, hosts a club that has not lost on the road, and the league leadership awaits the winners. Top scorers face off, fighting for Pichichi. The symbol of Spain against the side supported by the exiled Catalan president. A banner the size of a building suddenly appears in the capital: we are coming for you. Everything is set up to be a classic, but not a classic.
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This is not Real Madrid against Barcelona; Real Madrid vs Girona. Girona somehow managed to get this far; Win on Saturday and Míchel Sánchez’s team can really believe they can go all the way. They beat Barcelona and they beat Atletico Madrid; I beat Madrid and it’s real. A club that has not won anything, has not even reached Europe, reached the first league in 2017, regressed again and is playing its fourth top-flight season with a budget of 100 million Euros. 14. A team of Madrid’s size can actually win the league.
“We want to make history at the end of the season,” Míchel said. “Leaving the top of the Bernabéu would also be special, leaving Girona on everyone’s lips. But we still cannot be a candidate to win the league. We still have 14 matches and I think Madrid and Barcelona will win a lot of matches. Every match is difficult for us. You need 85-90 points to win the league and we have 56 points. Madrid can do it, Barcelona can do it, Atletico can do it too. “It’s not fair for anyone to demand that we win the league.”
There are no demands, but there could be disappointment if they fall, which says something about what they do, the impossible seems more possible every week. Girona weren’t supposed to be there, but here they are, stubbornly refusing to let go. They have finished first place four times, having been top of the table in nine of 23 weeks so far heading into Saturday’s trip to the Bernabeu. They are just two points behind, if they win this will increase their total to fifth in 10 weeks. Up to the present. No wonder the L-word is being used more and more frequently: Leicester.
Can Girona do what Leicester did? Based on the evidence so far, they may do so. In fact, since they collected 56 points after 23 matches and were defeated only once, they are performing ahead of Claudio Ranieri, who completed 2016 with 81 points and was defeated three times. As Míchel suggested, the problem is probably with the other teams. That season, Arsenal finished second with 71 points, losing seven times. Spurs are in third place with 70 points. Madrid are already on 45 points with 58 points.
“Whoever wins tomorrow will have an advantage, but it’s a very long time,” Carlo Ancelotti said on Friday. “He came to Girona with great hope and motivation. They can win the game and lead the league and we have to keep that in mind. But tomorrow doesn’t decide anything: no matter what, the league will be decided later.”
Regardless, this has been a remarkable season and the fact that everyone dares to put it forward is reflected in that. This is the determinant of the title. A huge banner was erected in the center of Madrid this week, recalling Barcelona president Joan Laporta’s election campaign. The event, organized by an HR company that is one of Girona’s sponsors, sees players celebrating with the slogan: “When your CV isn’t everything.”
Girona has the smallest stadium in the first division, with a capacity of 13,942, in a city far from football madness and where many people support Barcelona 60 miles away. This is a club without major trophies – there is a Catalan Super Cup, plus titles in Spain’s third and fourth tiers but nothing more – and a squad of very few players, more than half of which Daley Blind is single-handedly responsible for. Look at the CVs of Girona players and you see that they have 37 relegations between them.
The announcement that Brazilian winger Sávio, on loan from Troyes, will join Manchester City has highlighted the flaw in the tale. Troyes and Girona are owned by City Football Group. Forty-seven percent of Girona is owned by the City; Pep Guardiola’s brother Pere owns 16 percent of the shares. “They have money to rent a place [for their banner] “He’s in Madrid and that can’t be cheap,” Ancelotti said.
But this alone does not explain or completely diminish what Girona do on the pitch: the City group includes only two players, their salary cap is set at 51 million euros compared to Madrid’s 727 million euros, and they are the most expensive player in their league. history is Artem Dovbyk, who cost 7 million euros for 50% of his registration. Dovbyk became La Liga’s top scorer with 14 points, along with Jude Bellingham, who cost 103 million euros.
These are a group of players and a coach who still shouldn’t be around. They didn’t go the traditional weak defense route, or even do it the dirty way. They are four ahead of Atletico, four ahead of Barcelona and have scored more goals than anyone else. There were three 4-2s, one 4-3, one 5-2 and one 5-3. Fourteen players found the net. No one in the league has dribbled more or made more assists than Sávio. Only Kirian Rodríguez has completed more passes than Aleix García. Their only defeat was against Madrid and even then their shots were in double digits.
That night, Girona lost their top spot for the first time in their history. Everyone assumed this was the case. “We cannot compete on equal footing with Madrid,” Míchel said, but here they stand in the way of a chance to get it back again. “We are in a fight we did not expect,” said Delfí Geli, the club’s president. The league is on the line at the Santiago Bernabéu on Saturday night.