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Silence, solitude and sadness for Leganés after desperate La Liga finale | Sid Lowe

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In 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 and they were losing 2-1. And to Real Madrid, too. They had just handed the bottles back and, legs like lead, dragged themselves out there again when from the stands where teammates and staff sat someone shouted: “Don’t lose faith, eh. Never, ever.”

Thirty-nine seconds later Leganés were level.

“The stars aligned,” Javier Aguirre had said three days before and just maybe it was happening again. Maybe he really was going to rescue them, despite the big limitations and the bad luck. Maybe they would actually make it, even without the two strikers they had taken from them, with the team where the second top scorer going into the final weekend was on one. Maybe there was actually a way out where there had been none. Somehow, they had given themselves a chance. And one thing was sure: they were going to give it a go. They had come this far, after all.

Deep in the relegation zone with five games left, as good as gone, Leganés had beaten Espanyol, drawn at Eibar and defeated Valencia 1-0 with 10 men, scoring one penalty and saving another. Then they went to San Mamés with nine players missing, their captain playing despite travelling there on crutches, a 19-year-old debutant up front, a starting XI that had one goal between them – a penalty – and still beat Athletic 2-0. Now, after four clean sheets in a row, here they were level with Madrid on the final day, coming back to make it 2-2 while fellow strugglers Celta were on course for a 0-0 draw at Espanyol – a game Leganés’s subs were watching on an iPad in the stands. Suddenly, Leganés were a goal from a survival, the great escape with their grasp, an astonishing finale about to unfold.

The Spanish Football Podcast
(@tsf_podcast)

Leganés subs following the Celta game at Butarque! https://t.co/fTq2EQLz29

July 19, 2020

Faith, someone says and so it starts. Leganés up and running, belief flooding back that they can actually do this, every human emotion there accelerated, amplified and stuffed into the final desperate nerve-shredding minutes. Minutes where it is impossible to keep up, hard to know what actually happened. What happens is this: within a minute the ball drops for Javi Avilés. He scuffs wide from three yards, the clock says 79.21 and he looks like he is going to cry but driven by a desire, a need for redemption, he runs at Madrid again and again.

They all do; it is frantic and getting faster, more fraught with every second. In the stands, subs and the suspended become supporters, screaming and shouting and clapping, more desperate by the second. Leganés can see the shoreline, Aguirre says afterwards, and so they swim, arms flailing wildly, oxygen struggling to reach their brains. Madrid are clinging on, the siege building at their box. Roger Assalé runs into the area and almost goes down. Avilés wins a corner. Roque Mesa swings at a shot and misses the ball. Madrid break. From six yards, Brahim hits it over, so Leganés hit back again, just 38 seconds passing before Óscar Rodríguez– not fully fit but sent on at half-time – is up the other end spinning inside Madrid area. Avilés runs again. Rosales launches a throw into the six-yard box. Leganés have a corner. And another.

Bryan Gil takes a shot.



Bryan Gil takes a shot. Photograph: Europa Press Sports/Europa Press/Getty Images

The clock says 83.16. The ball reaches Avilés six yards out, first time. He sees it go wide; some others have seen something else. There’s a pause, the referee has his finger in his ear. In the stands, they leap up, shouting. “Penalty!” “Handball!” They do so more in hope than expectation but suspended midfielder Rubén Pérez dashes to the back of the empty stand and looks through the window of a commentary box to look and it turns out that, bloody hell, it is too. As the ball comes in, Luka Jovic leans forward elbow first and handles it. This is it, Leganés’s lifeline.

Time though stands still and so does referee Guillermo Cuadra Fernández, finger in his ear, listening. In the stands they watch him. He’s not giving anything. Why isn’t he giving anything? They draw TVs with their fingers, point at the screens behind them and in front of him. Their shouts get louder, more desperate. They demand he goes and looks, plead with him to do so. But he doesn’t; the man in the VAR room tells him not to. There’s enough doubt to talk – two minutes pass – but not to look. “You’re fucking joking!” Pérez shouts.

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Time runs on. Rosales runs into Madrid’s area, Vinicius runs into Leganés’s. Bustinza stops him. Pichu Cuéllar saves from Brahim. Six minutes, the board says. Avilés is back, deep in the Madrid area, then Assalé is too. Dimitris Siovas is an emergency striker now. There’s a corner, Pichu is sent up for it, but it’s punched away. Still they come. Avilés is there. Assalé tumbles, deep in Madrid’s box. 94.43, it says. Madrid head up the other end, but Bustinza and Mesa dive in one last time. The ball’s theirs again, 95.23, and they’re off. Rosales, Bustinza, Silva, Guerrero, Silva, now Óscar.

It’s 95.30 when he crosses the halfway line, leading a stampede, a final charge: Assalé, Siovas, Bryan and Avilés are alongside, Silva is sprinting to go outside, Guerrero is trying to catch up. So are the referee and Toni Kroos. Everyone on the bench and in the stands is drawn in, getting closer with every metre run. The subs head down the stairs. It’s seven against four, all of them running on empty fuelled only by hope and desperation. Oscar reaches the edge of the area, turns inside Éder Militão. Bryan and Avilés are free but no one can shoot like him and this is his place, opportunity opening before him. This is it. It’s 95.41 when he hits it.

Sid Lowe
(@sidlowe)

That last charge….bloody hell pic.twitter.com/VNdmew9pNN

July 20, 2020

“I saw it going in, I wanted to see it going in,” Aguirre says. “It’s an excellent run and the whole goal was there to aim at, especially for someone who strikes the ball like he does: it’s perfect for him We still had that spirit, at the end of everything. Justice would have been done if it had gone in. I saw it go in, I saw it go in …”

Aguirre saw it fly over, Oscar crumpling to the floor. It’s over, Leganés are down, drowning with the shoreline in sight. A club that never expected to be in primera but came to belong, a model club, admired by everyone and managed by a Mexican you can’t help but love, is gone. There may be pride after the fall but the fall is too far. There is a deep, heavy silence. A procession leaves the pitch without a word. The ballboys quietly gather everything up. Youth teamer Aymane Mourid sits alone on an empty field. “They’re devastated,” Aguirre says, so close to a miracle but instead confronting what he calls the hardest moment of a 20-year managerial career.

The Spanish Football Podcast
(@tsf_podcast)

That was the chance… And Leganés didn’t take it. They gave their all, but they’re relegated. 2-2 full-time. pic.twitter.com/pSDCBuGwYR

July 19, 2020

Sid Lowe
(@sidlowe)

pic.twitter.com/SukhPCLmgo

July 19, 2020

Unai Bustinza, the captain, is broken. Standing before a TV camera on a touchline in the city hardest hit by coronavirus, where this might have meant more, he can hardly get his words out, trying to stop himself sobbing and not always succeeding. “There are people in a terrible way in hospital,” he says. “If what we have done is worth anything, fighting to the end, not giving in, if that’s a lesson in any way …” He has started but he can’t finish.

Outside, a few fans have gathered, applauding. “We didn’t abandon you in Segunda B; wherever you are we’ll be there,” they sing. “We’ll be back.”. Aguirre can hear them from the press room. “All I can say is ‘thanks’,” he insists. “Cruel fate sent us to the second division – that and our limitations. We gave everything we had, honest and honourable to the very end. When you start out you don’t imagine this, but it’s football. We’re all human, and errors are inherent in humans. When you embrace this game, you know. It hurts, but tomorrow there will be happiness again.”

Sid Lowe
(@sidlowe)

A handful of Leganes fans gather to applaud their players, singing “we’ll be back”. pic.twitter.com/jx4C9f8QNV

July 19, 2020

Talking points

While Leganés’s players collapsed to the floor, so did Celta’s. They had survived but no one celebrated. Instead they puffed out their cheeks, knowing they had got away with it, somehow. Unable to beat Espanyol, their players had watched the final minutes of Leganés’s match and knew how close they had come to segunda. They should not be this bad, they know, but they are. “This can’t happen again,” said Iago Aspas – which is what he said last year.

“We’re still not really conscious of what’s happened,” said Diego Martínez. What’s happened is that Granada – Granada! – have qualified for European football for the first time. It is a gigantic achievement for the team that have been the revelation this season.

LaLiga English
(@LaLigaEN)

HIGHLIGHTS | @GranadaCdeF put FOUR past @Athletic_en to cap their best ever season in #LaLigaSantander! ❤️✨

? #GranadaAthletic pic.twitter.com/QG28xXvngD

July 20, 2020

Javi Mata had scored 25 penalties in a row but he couldn’t score the 26th and Getafe conceded a 99th-minute goal at the end of a game where they had three goals of their own ruled out by VAR. Like Valencia, they missed out on Europe on the final day.

“I would like to dedicate this to my family, my wife and kids and my little nephews who go to bed crying when we lose,” said Real Sociedad manager Imanol Alguacil as his side, the most entertaining in Spain until lockdown came, clinched a European place. At which point he started crying too, which felt right somehow.

LaLiga English
(@LaLigaEN)

HIGHLIGHTS | @adnanjanuzaj‘s late equaliser secured 6th place for @RealSociedadEN! ??

? #AtletiRealSociedad pic.twitter.com/ANTBM7VgHL

July 19, 2020

And speaking of tears, Eibar lined up with Villarreal to give a standing ovation to Bruno Soriano and Santi Cazorla, who are leaving. Bruno is retiring, having finally made his way back after three years while Cazorla is off to Qatar. It’s sad to see them go and it feels too soon too – Cazorla has been arguably the outstanding midfielder this season. Yet he says “mentally and physically it’s harder by the day and I always said to the club that when I couldn’t give 100%, I would walk away.”

LaLiga English
(@LaLigaEN)

Thank you for the football, Santi. ?

? @19SCazorla ? pic.twitter.com/OPogpWRb8L

July 20, 2020

This has been Lionel Messi’s worst season in years. He has scored 25 goals and provided 22 assists.

Champions: Madrid.
Champions League places: Barcelona, Atlético, Sevilla.
European places: Villarreal, Real Sociedad, Granada.
Relegated: Espanyol, Mallorca, Leganés.
Pichichi (top scorer): Messi, 25.
Zamora (top goalkeeper): Courtois.

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