The club that never expected to be in primera but came to belong has been relegated after a wild draw on the final dayIn the final pause before the final push, a voice broke the silence. On the pitch Leganés’s exhausted players sought strength from somewhere while their manager sought a solution, one last throw of a dice he had already rolled more times than he could remember. There were 14 minutes left at the end of the longest season, the sun had set and somehow they were still standing but survival was slipping away. Four years they had been in the first division, each of them a miracle, yet if they were going to stay they had to win...
The clash of the bottom two in La Liga saw Javier Aguirre’s resurgent side overcome Espanyol – and Storm Fabien “This is the game,” Pablo Machín said but things weren’t going as planned, his weekend beginning badly and ending worse. Storm Fabien hit Spain, blowing through at 100km an hour, and east of Madrid an overhead cable came down, leaving him and his team trapped inside a train. Meanwhile, about the same time Espanyol were stuck in Guadalajara, pleading in vain for the league to delay the following morning’s kick off, Machín’s opponent was sitting with his feet up in front of the telly at home, the day’s problems slipping away. Which wasn’t the way Leganés manager Javier Aguirre planned...
Barcelona finally shrugged off the ghost of Butarque but Atlético and Real had their own battles as La Liga’s threads all came together in Madrid“The Ghost of Butarque: that’s a good name for a novel,” Ernesto Valverde said. It was coming up to midnight three days after Halloween and, Barcelona’s manager admitted, “everywhere we turned the Ghost of Butarque appeared.” His team were back in Madrid for the first time since September, the final leg of a Grand Day Out in the capital – Leganés v Atlético at 1pm, Real Madrid v Valladolid at 4.15pm, Rayo v Barcelona at 8.45pm – and it was happening again: the same feelings, the same fears. Back then, Barcelona lost at bottom-placed Leganés, their...
They train on a pitch surrounded by rubble but a Copa del Rey win over Real Madrid is the latest step on Leganés’s ride“It’s very noisy in there,” Asier Garitano said. It was Wednesday night and they were going wild in the Santiago Bernabéu dressing room, wild on the pitch and then wild on the bus as it travelled down the Castellana, 17km south to Butarque, where they arrived long after midnight and with no intention of going home. “It’ll be a late one,” grinned captain Martín Mantovani. Leganés had just made history. “Look around you, it happened,” Nereo Champagne had told Nordin Amrabat as he stood staring wide-eyed at an 80,000-capacity arena long-since empty but for a few hundred...
The two clubs, almost touching distance apart, had played a derby in every division except the top flight – but met on Friday for something special“It’s a clásico that’s a little different to all the rest,” the captain said. Through the metal gate, a few home fans were standing by the bus wanting to catch a glimpse of the players before heading off quietly but most had already gone, standing to applaud at the end and departing soon after. Somewhere above him in one corner of the stand the away supporters were still there though, belting out their version of Bad Moon Rising – a couple of hundred of them bouncing about, palms hammering against the fence. A small line...