It wasn’t quite “Camp Nou: available for weddings and barmitzvahs” but it was close. It was also seriously tempting. For only €300, you too could play in European football’s biggest stadium. Sixty minutes, a ref, coaches and Gatorade; medical attention as well, which was probably a good thing. Some €1bn in debt and with a salary limit of minus €144m, Barcelona had to raise money somehow if they were to start the virtuous cycle their president talked about. Or just the season with the men they had signed. Trouble was, even hundreds of people playing hundreds of games weren’t going to cover Gerard Piqué sitting on the bench for just one. Which is where the palancas came in.
The word of last summer, suddenly it was everywhere, part of the footballing lexicon, maybe even its folklore. Selling players wasn’t easy, although they really did try, and so Barcelona sold other assets instead. TV rights, mostly. In total, they pulled four palancas, or levers, putting €777m on the balance sheet and seven new players on the pitch. At 9.30pm on the evening before La Liga started, Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha, Andreas Christensen and Ousmane Dembélé were finally registered along with Franck Kessié. Jules Koundé had to wait a while. Héctor Bellerín and Marcos Alonso followed.
The next day, Barcelona drew 0-0 with Rayo Vallecano, which was at least an improvement: last season they hadn’t got a point against Andoni Iraola’s team; this season they got one and, as it turned out, that was enough. Because if they started it by pulling levers, leaving everything very late, they finished it early by lifting the league trophy, bidding farewell to the old place as champions four years on. “We’ve brought the happiness back,” Joan Laporta said. “We’re not so bad,” Xavi declared.
Although you sometimes wondered whether they were so good either, Barcelona did effectively win the league in March and mathematically won it just beyond the city limits with four matches to spare. Nobody could catch them, not even the Espanyol fans who chased them off the pitch that night – although they got closer than anybody else. It might not have been very “Xavian” – 11 of their wins were 1-0, prompting Diego Simeone into a glorious sly dig when he said: “These days I hear a lot of strategists who like the beautiful game say that 1-0s are beautiful too” – but Xavi had his first league as a coach, and had deserved it too. His team also won the Super Cup, picking Real Madrid apart.
Barca enjoying the moment but now being chased off pitch by Espanyol fans pic.twitter.com/UfKv78NPOS
— Samuel Marsden (@samuelmarsden) May 14, 2023
Unlikely though it seemed when they lost the first clásico to the sound of the Madrid fans launching into oles and chanting for Xavi to stay, Barcelona won 13 and drew one of their next 14 and were five points clear by halfway. And although Thibaut Courtois claimed “sometimes it’s nice to be the chaser”, within a month Barcelona were 11 points clear, only momentarily offering their pursuers any hope at all, and came out of the second clásico 12 points ahead and with the job done. They won the league having conceded just two at home: one was a penalty, the other an own goal, Marc-André ter Stegen only denied a clean sheet record by teammates no longer bothered about defending once they were champions, going from 10 conceded in 33.75 games to nine in 4.25.
The stats brokered little argument although, incapable of winning three in a row post-World Cup, there was something weirdly flat about Madrid, whose 4-0 win over Barcelona in the Copa del Rey semi-final made it even harder to work out quite how they had let themselves fall so far behind.
As for Atlético, in a season of two halves they really only played one of them. The pre-World Cup period was summed up when Yannick Carrasco missed a 99th-minute penalty taken after the full-time whistle, Saúl put the rebound off the bar and Reinildo’s follow-up to that somehow went over, knocking them out of the Champions League, before a 99th-minute goal saw them lose 3-2 to Cádiz three days later. It was only October but it was already over, although in the spring Simeone’s side started to play, chasing a runners-up spot and a fifth season in eight finishing above their city rivals, only to lose it in the 93rd-minute of the final day, which was a very atlético way to end it.
By then, it was hard to remember the beginning, it seemed such a long way away, cut off by the World Cup. Buried by all the other stuff, too. Not least the Negreira case and the fallout from it, which you knew had got really bad when Madrid and Barcelona refused to have lunch together and the old Franco question came up again, diversion delivered and everyone a historian all of a sudden. Then, depressingly, there was the racist abuse of Vinícius, who literally took a stand that at last obliged others to follow.
So much had happened, some of it really very good, some of it really very bad, and it had all stopped in the middle for Spain’s national team to be both of those things at once and for Lionel Messi to complete football, a season of records finally wrapped up by Joaquín, who retired on 622 first division appearances – the joint-highest ever.
There was Pepe Reina playing his 1,000th game. Burgos goalkeeper José Antonio Caro taking until a VAR-awarded penalty in the 78th minute of his 14th game to concede his first of the season. And Elche not beating anyone at all until February, 20 weeks in, to finally liberate defender Carlos Clerc to get some closure: he had gone 39 matches without a win until then. Even better was what it meant for Randy Nteka, who became the first player in La Liga history to beat the same team two games running: victorious against Villarreal on Monday with Rayo Vallecano, he left, signed for Elche and defeated them again five days later.
After a 37-game sequence that ran 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, Binary Code’s Real Oviedo at last scored more than a solitary goal and then went wild getting 2, 2, 3 and 2 in their next four. Referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz broke a yellow-card record in Qatar then came back to Spain and immediately did it all over again, showing 19 cards and raising as many reds in one afternoon as all the World Cup officials managed in a month, Frenkie de Jong calling it chaos having somehow escaped both matches without a booking. And even more amazingly, that same month Iñaki Williams did not play a game of football for the first time in six years.
Spain was just getting started up again, the bit before Qatar soon feeling like it belonged to a different age, a different season, like it didn’t really count. Which, actually, is pretty much how it had felt at the time too, everyone just waiting for the World Cup. At their title celebrations, when at last it was all over, Barcelona’s departing captain Sergio Busquets offered a reminder of everyone who had contributed to the champions, including retiree Piqué, partly because he had to. Wait, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang played? This season? Was it really only this season when Unai Emery walked? That Julen Lopetegui went? And that Rino Gattuso was here, puffing his chest out and announcing he was a lion not a pussycat, making a lot of noise and a bit of fun before slinking silently away. As for the many managers at Elche, there’s a prize if you can name them all.
By the end of the season Elche had more of them than wins, the first team relegated and weeks before the rest. Espanyol, whose season began with their goalkeepers seemingly competing to see who could drop the biggest clanger, were next despite having the Spaniard who scored most goals – and who, at 32, got two in two minutes on his international debut. Valladolid were the third on a final day when six teams could still go down. “Life hits you hard sometimes,” Papa Pezzolano said after they were finally sunk by fellow strugglers Getafe.
“We had a choice between good or shit and we chose shit,” Getafe coach Quique Sánchez Flores had grumbled and he was soon replaced by Pepe Bordalás, who had them Bordalasing their way to safety with just 68 passes on the final day. With three minutes and eight seconds of the season remaining, Almería were in the relegation zone but an Adri Embarba penalty gave them a 3-3 draw and survival. Celta coach Carlos Carvalhal insisted “La Liga is much harder than the Premier League”, and then set about proving it by winning just one in 11, leaving captain Iago Aspas warning: “We’re going to have to squeeze one bollock next to the other.” But they too survived on the final day, with a win over Barcelona. Cádiz, the only team down there to stick with their coach, the endearingly everyman Sergio González, also escaped. They had always expected to be down there; by contrast, crisis-hit Valencia, whose coach had asked them to sign “failures and losers”, didn’t expect to be confronted by the very real prospect of a first relegation in almost 40 years, but in the end the kids saved them, Javi Guerra, Alberto Marí and Diego López coming from the B team to keep them up on the final day.
For so long Sevilla had been down there too, becoming the story of the season. After a dreadful start, they sacked Lopetegui and by the winter, half of their summer signings had gone again, but things only got worse under Jorge Sampaoli, who spent as much time suspended in glass boxes as he did bounding about the touchline in his tight blue tracksuit and beanie, handing out instructions no one could understand. Deep in trouble, they genuinely feared a return to the second division 20 years on. But then along came José Luis Mendilibar, the “anti-modern” manager who can’t be bothered with the bullshit, and pulled them clear. Better still, he took them to Budapest, where they won the Sevilla Cup – “not bad for a bloke who won this job in a raffle,” he said. Jesús Navas lifted the trophy – 17 years after his first.
That kept up the run. No Spanish club has lost to a team from any other country in 18 European finals, and eight teams will be back to try to take that to 19 next year.
The eight doesn’t include Girona, who were great fun to watch – four 2-2s, three 3-2s, a 4-2 a 6-2 and a 5-3 – but missed out on history when Osasuna beat them on the final day, and it doesn’t include Rayo either, who were almost as much fun. The chant at Vallecas runs “next year, Rayo-Liverpool!” and, with their team flying, at one point it seemed the flaw in this plan lay on Merseyside, not Madrid. But although they reached the final day with half a chance, in the end The Final Countdown getting belted out after every goal remained their only encounter with Europe.
It does include Atlético. Superb post-World Cup and post-João Félix too, they qualified for the Champions League for an 11th season in a row, alongside Barcelona, Madrid and Real Sociedad who are back for the first time in a decade. All 19 of the players who took them there came through the academy, coach Imanol Alguacil describing what they have done as “absolute madness”. At 37, David Silva is going back with them.
Below them, Villarreal qualified for the Europa League under Quique Setién, who left the kids’ team he was coaching in Cantabria to return to the top flight and finish fifth. Even Betis’s absurd red-card record – they committed the second fewest fouls but had 15 players sent off, the highest total in Europe – didn’t stop them taking sixth. Which was a fitting close for everyone’s favourite cheeky scamp who finally, tearfully said goodbye at 41 and departed with them in Europe again. And the Conference League spot went to Osasuna, 16 years since their last trip to the continent.
Osasuna also reached a Copa del Rey final for only the second time in their history. They had somehow found their way through extra time four rounds in a row and eventually got there thanks to the first goal Pablo Ibáñez ever scored for the club he always supported – a 116th-minute belter at San Mames. Although they lost the final, Carlo Ancelotti completing his collection by winning every trophy there is in just fifteen months, the navarros weren’t to be denied. “When we played the final everyone wanted Madrid to win so that the team in seventh would also go to Europe,” coach Jagoba Arrasate said, “but it turned out that the team in seventh was us.” Now, he said, it was time for a beer.
They had earned it. And they weren’t the only ones.
Best award
Apart from these ones, naturally. Embarba got the golden spade, having dug Almería out of trouble on the final day. But nothing beats Villarreal getting a real-life, 11-metre-tall, three-metre-long, 127 million-year-old spinosaur from the early Cretaceous period named in their honour.
🥇 E M B A R B A🏗
— UD Almería (@U_D_Almeria) June 7, 2023
😃 El gran trabajo de @AdriEmbarba11 le hace ser el vencedor de la pala de oro de @AJCCOficial.
🔝 El futbolista ha sido el que más veces habéis elegido con vuestros comentarios como el más destacado de nuestros partidos.
¡Temporadón! 🔴⚪️ pic.twitter.com/cDNALbNfem
Most humble club
Second Division Burgos. “We got here eating Mortadella sandwiches and we’ll keep eating Mortadella sandwiches,” coach Julian Calero insisted. “Caviar is too expensive for this club – and, anyway, Mortadella is tasty.”
Best negotiator
Raúl de Tomás’s agent, reported to police by the Rayo Vallecano president Raúl Martín Presa – seen sporting an ostentatious plaster on his nose – for allegedly butting him in the face during negotiations. Four days later, the deal was done.
Best appointment
Jorge Almirón had not won in 16 games when Elche sacked him in 2021. So, they decided to bring him back 18 months later. Five games and no wins later, he was gone again.
Most valued member of staff
Fuenlabrada’s odd-job man, performing the miracle of the fish and loaves, only better. Saturday night in Primera RFEF and a ball flies off the pitch and up on to the roof alongside. Fortunately, there’s a bloke with a ladder and a head for heights who doesn’t just get the ball back; he gets three of them.
Enjoyed this moment today at Fuenlabrada vs Sanse. Ball flew off the pitch and up onto the roof alongside. Fortunately, a bloke came along with a ladder to go get it. Turns out there were three of them up there. Result. pic.twitter.com/hQYtPe6Wc5
— Sid Lowe (@sidlowe) April 15, 2023
Riskiest promise
Ancelotti told Fede Valverde that he would tear up his coaching badge if the Uruguayan didn’t get to 10 goals this season, but that was a pretty safe bet – completed by February – so it has to the Catalan radio reporter who said he would get a tattoo if Taty Castellanos scored three against Real Madrid. The good news is he didn’t; the bad news is he got four.
Worst excuse (and most disappointing refusal to heed advice from the Jackson Five)
Xavi, who blamed defeat at Getafe on the sunshine. “Try Nivea,” Quique Sánchez Flores replied. Then there’s the new Spain manager trying to explain voting Julián Álvarez for The Best, and coming up with: “I wasn’t drunk.”
Best fan
Stupidest fan
Twenty-two players to chose from and you decide to attack the 6ft 3in, 13-stone goalkeeper with the iron fists?
Best broadcaster
“Streamers of the world, step aside! I’m coming down hill with no brakes!” It’s Luis Enrique.
Best photo
💛 ¡Un sentimiento que llevo dentro! pic.twitter.com/OCxiBmgPGj
— Cádiz Club de Fútbol (@Cadiz_CF) May 19, 2023
Best bedtime story
Little Red Riding Hood, read by Javier Tebas.
Best promo
F is for: fire, faith, fair play, fantasy, fouls, flow, fans, family, finals, force, future, fiesta, footballers and … “fuck off”.
Best sponsor
🦉 @Drake 💙❤
— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona_es) October 14, 2022
Primer artista en alcanzar los 50.000 millones de reproducciones en @Spotify. Primer artista en estar presente en la camiseta del FC Barcelona. pic.twitter.com/EG0Y1GN7qt
Coolest player
Lucas Ocampos didn’t look when the first penalty was taken in the shootout at the Europa League final. Which wouldn’t have been that unusual, except that he was the one taking it.
Might be the coolest thing we've ever seen https://t.co/CFySXzfqKX
— The Spanish Football Podcast (@tsf_podcast) June 1, 2023
Funniest player
You must be Joaquín. Actually, no, not this time; this time it’s Zuhaitz Gurrutxaga.
Ugliest player
Mallorca striker Vedat Muriqi, a big ugly lump, 1m 90cm tall, a weird beast who makes you cross the road when you see him. That’s according to his coach Javier Aguirre, anyway.
Ugliest manager
“Aguirre’s right, I am ugly. I think my wife has got a problem with her eyesight,” Muriqi said. “But he’s not exactly handsome, either.”
Nicest player
Borja Iglesias, who missed his first ever penalty in primera, saved by Elche’s Edgar Badia, and afterwards said: “I’m glad it was him: he’s a bloody good guy.”
Most perfect player
Toni Lato. Gattuso thinks so anyway: “My daughter is very young, she’s only 18, but I think Toni is the ideal man for her,” the Valencia manager said. “Any girl would like to have a boyfriend like Toni.” Sadly for him, and maybe for her, one girl already did. Speaking of which …
Most frightening father-in-law
Luis Enrique again, who publicly announced that his daughter was going out with Ferran Torres but warned that if the Barcelona forward was ever stupid enough to celebrate a goal by sticking his thumb in his mouth, he would take him off, stick him in the stands and never pick him for Spain again.
Most unlikely comparison
Getafe coach Quique Sánchez Flores, who likened Djene Dakonam to … his aunt. Which would have been quite odd anyway but his aunt is the late flamenco singer Lola Flores. Apparently, she couldn’t sing or dance either, but you didn’t want to miss her. Just like the Getafe centre-back.
Most caring coach
Valladolid coach Pacheta, with the kind of humanity there’s no room for in football, telling defender Javi Sánchez not to come into work that weekend and instead to attend the birth of his son. “He was doubting what to do,” Pacheta said. “I said: go. You have to be there. This only happens to you once, maybe twice; there’s nothing like seeing your child born. There’s no discussion: go. It’s just a game of football, someone else plays. In the end, we won, he’s with his wife and child, everyone’s happy. It’s life.”
Biggest hero
Unai Simon, Ivo Gribic and Alex Remiro all struck a blow against evil, smacking goal kicks straight into the spider cam. The sight of Cádiz keeper Conan Ledesma sprinting across the pitch, defibrillator in hand, still gets you every time, and Chris Ramos became the first person born in the city to score for them in 30 years too. , and Chris Ramos became the first person born in the city to score for them in thirty years too. And then there’s Lucas Perez who left them, giving up a place at a first division club where he was top scorer, to join Deportivo de La Coruna the team supported as a boy from the city where he was born. In the third division. On eight times less than he was earning before. And paying half of the transfer fee himself.
Best trolling
Minute 62 … heeeeere’s Antoine!
Best game
Pretty much any Girona played. Betis 3-4 Celta, which had seriously good goals, particularly Gabri Veiga’s first (two headers taking the ball over the defender before nudging it beyond the keeper with his right foot, a touch of the Le Tissiers about it), an Abner Vinícius miss so bad it’s good, a red card (of course), some horrific acting from Aspas, and a potential equaliser headed just wide on 101min 35sec. Then there was Getafe and Valladolid. Not normally Spain’s great entertainers, they served up the best show the Coliseum’s seen since AD325, a superb 3-2 win for the visitors, with Óscar Plano and Damián Suárez scoring the pick of the goals.
Best touch
Simeone. Or was it Manuel Pellegrini?
Best shot
Pick that one out … of, er, your living room.
¿Te imaginas que un balón chutado por Fede Valverde entre por tu terraza y acaba en tu salón?
— Relevo (@relevo) November 8, 2022
Ayer ocurrió. Hamza estaba viendo el Rayo - Real Madrid desde su balcón y...
Entramos en su casa para que nos lo cuente él mismo. 👇
📲 https://t.co/awKGahVOco pic.twitter.com/sT8JNuVyPo
Worst miss
Step forward Gerard Moreno. No, not like that.
NO SE PUEDE CREER
— Fútbol en Movistar Plus+ (@MovistarFutbol) December 31, 2022
El increíble gol que se le escapó a Gerard Moreno. #LaCasaDelFútbol pic.twitter.com/FcbZPxgFh8
Best assist
“It was my only way out,” Rodrygo Goes said. Some way out, this.
Best goal
“It would have been genius if they had scored, but …” Rayo coach Andoni Iraola said, the “but” hanging heavy. Óscar Trejo and Isi Palazón tried the Cruyff penalty only for Isi to run in and put it over the bar, so that’s no good. These, though, were. “I saw red shirts and I started to run,” said Valverde. Before he knew it he had gone 67 metres, hit 30kph, passed three players and smashed the ball into the top corner against Mallorca. “It’s a mad golazo, isn’t it?” Samu Chukwueze said, cracking up, after he scored an equally cartoonish goal to beat Madrid 3-2. His first had been pretty tasty too. If you haven’t yet seen Martin Braithwaite’s debut, match-winning goal for Espanyol against Athletic, it had a hint of Compostela and his hero Ronaldo about it.
Imagine you have never scored in 116 games in Spain and then you go and do this. And then this, in the derby no less. Oh, and then this, racking up three goals from a combined 100 yards. Nemanja Gudelj, ladies and gentlemen. Mind you, Youseff En Nesyri’s goal in that last game might even be better. If you like goals from the halfway line, there’s Joselu at Getafe and José Luis Morales at Osasuna. Walking in, Memphis. And how about this for a way to win a Cup tie, from Abde?
But the best, by miles, was in Ibiza. Ivan Morante, we salute you.
— The Spanish Football Podcast (@tsf_podcast) March 25, 2023
Or it would be if it wasn’t for Atlético’s Ángel Correa, the footballer so magical, so capable of the impossible, that he managed to get a goal while he was sitting on the bench – thanks to a referee who initially ruled it out for offside and took so long to rule it back in again that by the time he had, Correa had gone. It’s not unusual for a goalscorer to run to the bench to celebrate with his teammates; this time it was his teammates running to the bench to celebrate with the goalscorer, everyone falling about giggling.
Best celebration
That was good. So was Rodrygo doing an i for Ignacio in the Copa del Rey final. There was nothing quite as funny as Álvaro Morata falling down, complaining about a foul and lying faced the other way, unaware that his deflected shot was looping towards the line anyway, then jumping up and celebrating when he heard the roar greeting a goal he didn’t know was his, teammates trying to convince the sceptical striker that yes, it had come off him last. Iñaki Williams’ reaction to scoring against Espanyol was lovely, running past the bench to embrace his kid brother Nico, who had missed two sitters in the cup semi final three days earlier and had been left out to give him “a bit of breathing room”. “It was emotional; Iñaki knows better than anybody what a bad time I’ve had: that hug helped me believe in myself,” Nico said afterwards, having then come on and scored the second himself.
And then there was the moment Real Sociedad captain Mikel Oyarzabal, recently returned from a knee ligament injury, scored his first goal in 315 days from the penalty spot to win the Basque derby, running towards the stands, breaking into tears in front of fans and then heading off in search of the doctors, physios and staff who guided him back, hugging them: Jon, Jon, Unai, Virigina, Imanol, Javi, Edu and the rest. “There are so many people who look after us every day and it’s important that people see that,” he said.
And so to surely the moment of the lot, the one that said it all
With five minutes to go and Sevilla trailing, relegation grabbing at their heels again, coach Jorge Sampaoli sent Gudelj on with detailed instructions – the second time he had done it this season – full-back Marcos Acuña decided he’d had enough of this. Not so much a note as an Ordnance Survey map, a set of Ikea instructions, Gudelj and Óliver Torres were standing there looking at it, a pair of Homer Simpsons wondering what the hell le grille was, when Acuña thundered over, tore it from their hands, screwed it up and threw it to the floor, telling them to stop messing about and shaking his head in disgust, at once an act of defiance and a plea for help, the confusion and crisis symbolised by that piece of paper, as if Sampaoli himself had been binned. Which very soon he was, Mendilibar becoming the managerial expression of the rebellion Acuña began.
Manager of the year
Xavi won a league which, for all the levers, never looked likely. Míchel almost made history at Girona, while always being as decent as his team was fun, which is very – something which can be said about Iraola too. Mid-table definitely isn’t mediocrity for Mallorca, where Aguirre has done a remarkable job. Manuel Pellegrini still has things to do, he says, and does them so well. And what Jagoba Arrasate has done at Osasuna is just extraordinary. It really should be him or Imanol Alguacil at Real Sociedad. Only, how can it be when Mendilibar did that?
Player of the year
For a while it could have been Valverde. Lewandowski briefly, too. Vinícius was electric, the most exciting footballer about. And this was Ter Stegen’s league. But in the end, while he didn’t win anything, the best was Griezmann. “I’ll always remember the last game before the World Cup, running around in the 90th minute like he was an 18-year-old kid who had only just made his debut, even though the World Cup was four days away: not everyone has that, but he does,” Simeone said. Griezmann had been good then; by the time he came back he was barely believable. Scorer of 16 goals, provider of 15 assists and so much more, not given a fixed position but the responsibility to go where the game demanded – which, it often seemed, was absolutely everywhere. He ended up being Atletico’s everything, Rodrigo de Paul calling him their Messi. “When he’s at his best, he can be whatever he wants,” Simeone said.
Team of the season
G: Marc-André ter Stegen (Barcelona). RB: Arnau Martínez (Girona). CB: Ronald Araujo (Barcelona). CB: Robin Le Normand (Real Sociedad). LB: Fran García (Rayo). M: Isi Palazon (Rayo). M: Mikel Merino (Real Sociedad). M: Eduardo Camavinga (Real Madrid). F: Vinícius Júnior (Madrid). F: Robert Lewandowski (Barcelona). F: Antoine Griezmann (Atlético).
Subs: Take Kubo, David Silva (Real Sociedad), David García, Moi Gómez (Osasuna), Kroos, Modric, Rodrygo, Militão (Madrid), Raphinha, De Jong (Barcelona), Baena, Chukwueze (Villarreal), Gabri Veiga (Celta), Aleix, Tsygankov (Girona), Álvaro García (Rayo), Muriqi, Kang-in (Mallorca), Unal (Getafe), Darder, Joselu (Espanyol), Pacha (Cádiz), Montiel (Sevilla, coming on for the shootout).
And finally …
“People don’t understand: they think it’s just football, but it’s your life” – Tecatito Corona.
