Jorge Sampaoli’s side recorded their first away win for 511 days at Leganés last weekend but while there are signs of progress, there’s much work to do
“Players end up fearing they’ll never win away again,” Jorge Sampaoli said and you could see why. Sevilla hadn’t won on the road since 2015 – you know, back when there was hope. Worse, they hadn’t won away for a year and four months: 511 days had passed since a 3-2 victory at Málaga on the final weekend of 2014-15. An entire season had been and gone but they hadn’t been and won. They’d defeated lesser clubs Logronés and Mirandés in the Cup and Athletic in Europe, true, but travelling just wasn’t their thing. Not here and not there: 21 league games, three trips abroad in the Champions League, three more in the Europa League, and no victories.
They had been from Manchester to Mönchengladbach and Molde; more to the point they’d gone to Málaga, Las Palmas and Valencia, both sides of the city; to Eibar twice and Villarreal twice; to San Sebastián, A Coruña, and across to the other side of Seville; to Madrid, north and south, Vigo, and Vallecas; Getafe and Gijón, Bilbao twice and Barcelona, but it was no good. So they tried going somewhere they’d never been before: New Mexico, USA. That, at least, was what president José Castro said – Albuquerque, Butarque, same difference – prompting CD Leganés to advertise Saturday’s match with the stars and stripes and a foam finger declaring, in English: “come on cucumbers!”
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