It’s back: La Liga, home of the beautiful game. Land of Iago Aspas, Pedri and Antoine Griezmann, of Jude Bellingham too. Of Isinho, Iker Muniain, Gerard Moreno, and Darderismo. Of Papu Gómez, the man who says “a dribble opens a new world” and follows the referee, because there’s no one better positioned, see? Of Youssef En-Nesyri’s leap, the outside of Luka Modric’s boot and Isco’s dancing feet. Feel the quality, the intelligence, the touch, the technique, the fantasy, the …
Oh. That. Yep, that’s back too. Bigger than ever before. One hundred and sixteen minutes of pure Bordalásball.
The opening weekend started in Almería, where midfielder Óscar Valentín said the heat was “inhuman,” with a penalty given to Rayo, the first goal of the new season scored by Isi Palazón and followed by another from Randy Nteka in 2-0 win. It ended just before midnight on Sunday in Getafe with a penalty not eventually given to Barcelona, the champions held to a 0-0 draw while Xavi Hernández, sent off and steaming, watched from his glass prison, supporters with outstretched arms positioned the other side of the press box he had been forced to occupy, trying to squeeze him into their selfies. Between those two moments, a lot had happened. A lot more was about to, the fallout fierce.
For the first time a goal from Take Kubo – “great player, lovely lad, terrible hair cut,” according to Javier Aguirre – wasn’t accompanied by a Real Sociedad victory, after Artem Duvbyk scored Girona’s equaliser eight minutes into his debut. Javi Guerra, the kid who rescued Valencia last season, went and did it again with a last-minute winner at Sevilla. And Rafa Benítez’s return ended in Celta’s defeat to Osasuna. There was Sergi Darder, coming on to change the game for Mallorca, Isco playing his first match in 10 months and looking a little like magic again, and above all there was Bellingham. “The Boss,” AS called him after his hugely impressive debut at Athletic.
By the end, though, everyone was talking about what they had just seen and couldn’t unsee at the Coliseum, where Barcelona had suffered but not scored over two and a quarter hours. Which shouldn’t have surprised that much. El Pais declared there “no more disagreeable place than Getafe”, while in AS, Santi Giménez compared playing them to eating a “nail sandwich,” watching their games being like a Jason Statham film: “Whether he’s facing an eastern mafioso, a Russian mercenary or a 25-metre Megalodon with teeth the size of a Range Rover, you know there’s going to be damage done.” This was the fourth time in a row Barcelona have failed to score there, a third 0-0 to go with a 1-0 defeat. And the day before the game Getafe coach José Bordalás had announced: “Tiki-taka is history; some keep talking about it but it’s gone.” Immediately after it, the Barça midfielder Oriol Romeu even admitted: “We knew what was coming.” But, he added: “This exceeded expectations.”
Xavi called it a “disgrace.”
What was coming was a night so long that the editor of one newspaper said he couldn’t even see it out. “An insufferable disgrace,” Alfredo Relaño called it, saying he “turned off the telly horrified, feeling like ever more sinister spirits are destroying football. An affront to all of us who like football, this doesn’t work.” It was also one that opens debates, about styles and time-keeping and entertainment and whose responsibility it is, about where the line is drawn and by whom. Even Xavi didn’t so much blame Getafe as what you could call their enablers, addressing the way referees officiate and calling for a stopping clock, insisting: “Do that and you end the problems; I’ve said that a thousand times.” It had certainly shown that simply adding time doesn’t really fix anything.
At one point during the game, Ronald Araujo literally jumped up and caught the ball, which might even have been the standout moment. He later explained that he thought the ball was already out of play, which kind of made sense: it often was. There were 10 minutes added at the end of the first half, 16 at the end of the second. A game that started at 9.30pm finished at 11.43pm. Some 116 minutes were used up, never to be given back, and in almost half of them the ball was not in play. There were 20 fouls from Getafe – which, actually, seems quite low – and just over 20% of the ball, red cards for Raphinha first and Jaime Mata later, another for Xavi for complaining that referee César Soto Grado was turning a blind eye, allowing Getafe to get away with it, and no goals.
In short, it wasn’t great. And yet it kind of was. Sport said Barcelona had been stopped “with a beating,” although their failure to truly generate football didn’t help. “Those of us who like good football and entertainment feel sadness and anger today,” complained Enric Masip, advisor to Barcelona’s president Joan Laporta, which he would. “The real time [played] is lamentable. The absurd and provocative fouls are constant. The good player has it tough, the hacker triumphs.”
When Barcelona finally thought they might get the win, a late, late lifeline handed to them when Araujo went down on 99min 59sec, the referee waved it away. Sent to the VAR for a second look, a penalty seeming probable, he instead saw a handball from Gavi – or, to use Xavi’s words, “invented” it. And so Barcelona had been held; in fact, they had almost been beaten, Gastón Álvarez heading just past the post on 105min 19sec. Either way, they had been Bordalásed. Post-game there was even a hint of a smile, a laugh as Romeu discussed what had happened. There is something almost comic about it, after all. Alongside him, Frenkie de Jong claimed “at least 25 or 30 minutes had been wasted.” You could imagine the pair getting back to the dressing room and finding a calling card: congratulations, you’ve met the Getafe crew.
Yet that’s a joke too and an easy one: the way Getafe are often portrayed, these kind of dark, cartoonish figures – and none so bad as Damián Suárez – often becomes a caricature. That is something that their coach is acutely aware of, seeing himself as a victim, a narrative in which he is everyone’s go-to bad guy, a public enemy, an affront to decency and football. It is often exaggerated, but that does not mean it is entirely invented. This is what his teams do: pack a defence, break up the game, get in your face and under your skin. Chip away at the flow, the time, and the opponents. Raphinha was rightly sent off for landing an elbow on Álvarez – “the only violent moment was theirs,” Bordalás said – but that had been part of the plan, a trap laid. Similar moments went unseen, executed under cover of darkness. Getafe completed 167 passes – Barcelona had 659 – but they didn’t want more. When they survived on the final day of last season against Valladolid, they did so with just 64 of them. “At 0-0 they’re comfortable; they waste time, they interrupt the game. That’s their way of competing,” Xavi said.
And in the end, that’s the thing: it works. For Getafe fans, there’s a kind of fun in being the baddies, a rebellion, sticking it to the man, all those fancy dans. No one likes us, we don’t care. So much the better, in fact. The first time the Coliseum – even the name fits – started singing “Bordalás, I love you!” last night was immediately after Raphinha had been sent off. It wouldn’t be the last, and they couldn’t mean it any more. When he joined Getafe in 2016, Bordalás took over a side near the bottom of the second division and changed everything, taking them back to Primera and all the way into Europe. Last season he returned with just seven games to go and rescued them again, those 64 passes all all-time low and yet high enough to complete an impossible misison. Then he had agreed to stay another season. Now he had opened it by doing what he does, and to the champions.
“If we sell the league as a product and this is the result, it’s not good,” Xavi said.
Almería 0-2 Rayo Vallecano, Sevilla 1-2 Valencia, Real Sociedad 1-1 Girona, Las Palmas 1-1 Mallorca, Athletic Club 0-2 Real Madrid, Celta Vigo 0-2 Osasuna, Villarreal 1-2 Real Betis, Getafe 0-0 Barcelona
Monday Cádiz v Alavés 6.30pm BST, Atlético Madrid v Getafe 8.30pm BST
“He’s not doing the league a favour at all. We want to be proud of having one of the best in the world, we can’t criticise it, we have to defend it. I don’t share that view: it’s a way of justifying that they didn’t get three points with an incredible squad, incredible players,” Bordalás replied. “That’s what makes football great: when a small team can face up to a big one, compete with them, get a point and even have the chance to beat them.”
