Just before two o’clock on Palm Sunday, as Holy Week began and religious brotherhoods started their slow, swaying progress through the streets of Seville, first La Paz, then La Hiniesta, then the rest, a man entered the city at Santa Justa. Aged 69, diagnosed with leukaemia five years ago, wearing a grey cardigan, blue jacket and a slightly manic smile, he’s thinner than before but couldn’t be more familiar. Joaquín Caparrós has coached Sevilla more times than anyone, across three spells, the first a quarter of a century ago; now he was returning for a fourth. “My face is a reflection; it says it all,” he said, leaving the station and stopping on the corner, searching for the car coming for him.
Caparrós arrived on a train, alone and as their saviour. As somebody’s saviour, anyway: someone to get behind, someone to hide behind too, for a little while. Two days earlier Sevilla had lost 1-0 at Valencia. That night, manager Xavier García Pimienta said he would be with his players until the end of the world but he didn’t make it to the end of the weekend. On Thursday, the president José Maria del Nido Carrasco had declared it “time to be close to the coaching staff” and on Saturday they took training as normal; 24 hours later, they had been sacked. Caparrós had already been called. He will be their eighth coach in less than three seasons.
