Rewriting history

With their 1-1 draw at Betis on De­cem­ber 21, Girona FC ex­tended their un­beaten run in La Liga to ten, with eight wins and two draws. In fact, their only league de­feat this sea­son came at home to league lead­ers Real Madrid, with whom they are tied on points head­ing into 2024. It has been an as­ton­ish­ing start to the sea­son by Míchel’s side, who have at­tracted ad­mir­ers far and wide due to their ex­pan­sive ap­proach to the game. And this de­spite los­ing the likes of Romeu, Riquelme and Castel­lanos over the sum­mer and not in­vest­ing heav­ily in new trans­fers. That’s right, al­though Girona are part of the group that owns Man­ches­ter City and New York, they have not ben­e­fit­ted from the lav­ish in­vest­ments fans might have ex­pected given such well-to-do own­ers. Even Barça fans were sur­prised by the foot­balling les­son Míchel’s men dished out to Xavi’s sup­pos­edly more il­lus­tri­ous side back on De­cem­ber 10 at the Olympic Sta­dium, Barça’s tem­po­rary home while the Camp Nou is being ren­o­vated. Girona’s 4-2 win did not flat­ter the vis­i­tors, whose slick pass­ing and styl­ish play re­sem­bled what the home side long to see of their own team.

Míchel’s team has even taken top spot in La Liga at sev­eral points dur­ing the first half of this cam­paign, the last time being after a com­fort­able 3-0 home win against Alavés on De­cem­ber 18. Only a Madrid vic­tory and that 1-1 draw at Betis, which for long pe­ri­ods of the game looked like it would be an­other vic­tory until the home side equalised late on, pre­vented Girona from start­ing 2024 as sole leader of the Span­ish first di­vi­sion.

And given the ev­i­dence so far this sea­son, fans can start be­liev­ing this is no flash in the pan. Girona went seven matches un­de­feated – a draw and six wins – be­fore that loss to An­celotti’s side at home – that was 19 points out of a pos­si­ble 21 at the start of the sea­son, which, com­bined with the cur­rent ten-game run al­lows them to dream of com­pet­ing in Eu­rope next cam­paign. And how about, whis­per it, title con­tenders this sea­son?

If we look at the stats, the vic­tory against Alavés meant Girona reached 50 wins in the first di­vi­sion, mak­ing them one of only nine teams among the 63 teams to have com­peted in a top-flight cam­paign that do not have a neg­a­tive bal­ance be­tween wins and losses (won 50, drawn 31, lost 50) – the other teams are Real Madrid, Barça, Atlético, Ath­letic, Va­len­cia, Sevilla, Real So­ciedad and Vil­lar­real.

Be­yond the stats how­ever, that 1-1 draw against a Betis side who have not lost at the Ben­ito Vil­la­marin this sea­son was tes­ta­ment to how op­po­nents are strug­gling to over­come a team that dis­plays great per­son­al­ity and an un­break­able re­solve in any sce­nario and against any rival. One con­cern in Seville was that the team ended up look­ing tired, al­though that is surely down to hav­ing had to play against Alavés on the Mon­day night.

Fol­low­ing the draw in Seville, Míchel said: “We lacked en­ergy, but we played a great game,” show­ing that he was once again more than sat­is­fied with his team’s per­for­mance. “The team played a great game against a great op­po­nent. We had to con­trol the game well with the ball and I think we did that in the first 50-60 min­utes. We were able to make sure Betis didn’t hurt us in the first few min­utes, when they’re al­ways very strong. We both had chances, but I think the con­trol was ours. No­body has won here and we came close. You can say the draw is fair even though we had it in our hands.”

“We fin­ished 2023 with a total of 77 points. We’ve had an in­cred­i­ble first half of the sea­son, at the level of the best teams in the world. I don’t want to say it was ex­cel­lent be­cause you can al­ways im­prove things, but all the fans will be proud of the team.” In­deed they will, Míchel, in­deed they will.

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