It is the best team so far in the League. And who plays best. Madrid’s draw at the Bernabéu against Rayo (0-0) has left Girona alone at the top of the standings. No one can follow the tremendous pace that Míchel’s team has printed this season and they have already gone 12 days. It is not something anecdotal. Not at all.
They came back and beat Osasuna (2-4) in a match that placed them in first place provisionally, pending what Madrid did. And Madrid failed in their own stadium after having defeated Xavi’s Barça in the classic (1-2). But he couldn’t beat the orderly Rayo of Francisco, who, curiously, had been the coach of Girona.
Top scorer in the League
And in Montilivi now lives the sole leader of the championship, a team that has broken all barriers with a game that is as modern as it is joyful. Modern, cheerful and efficient, transformed as he is into the top scorer in the League. Girona now has 29 goalswhile Atlético, with one game less, reaches 26, Xavi’s Barça remains at 24 and Bellingham’s Madrid at 23.
Girona has traced an upward curve that causes astonishment. He has 31 points out of a possible 36 and has two points ahead of Madrid, which was slowed down at the Bernabéu, four over Barça, which survived in added time in San Sebastián thanks to Araujo’s header, which now acquires much more value for the white tie. And Míchel’s team has six points over Atlético, pending the latter playing its postponed match against Sevilla.
The work of Míchel and Quique Cárcel
“I don’t see a ceiling for this team,” proclaimed a euphoric Míchel after the victory, warning, of course, that his Girona “is not for the Madrid, Barça or Atlético League but for the other League, the one from fourth to sixth position”.
Well, right now that League rules, ahead of the big three, award for a game idea drawn by Quique Cárcel, the sports director who has built a work in the Montilivi laboratory that already transcends Spanish football.
Not so long ago the club was in relegation positions in the Second Division. It happened on matchday 12 of the 2021-22 season. The team was on its way to the First RFEF. But the executive did not modify the roadmap. Rather, he redoubled his commitment to Míchel, who ended up taking the club to the First Division, where he completed the past season on a high note.
“I don’t see a ceiling for this team. We have broken all expectations, all of them”
Girona coach
Not as much, however, as in this one. There are 12 matches, 10 wins, a draw (1-1 on the first matchday in San Sebastián against Real Sociedad) and a defeat, the one inflicted by Madrid in Montilivi (0-3). But Girona rose from that single setback with such authority that it proudly looks down.
He is so high up that no one surpasses him. “We have broken all expectations, all of them…”, acknowledged the coach who visited this Saturday in Vallecas where he started as a player and then his career as a coach. If Girona defeats Rayo, they will go into the national team break as the leader, enjoying that privileged condition for two more weeks.
It is a team that has also known how to survive capital absences this past summer. Lost Oriol Romeu, who went to Barça. He was the pillar in the center of the field. He ran out Santi Well, who went to Wolverhampton. She was his support in the axis of the defense. He saw how Riquelme He returned to the Metropolitano under the shelter of Simeone at Atlético. And he couldn’t do anything to ensure that Taty Castellanos, his number nine, who was on loan from New York City, was transferred to Lazio.
Related news
Four essential pieces of Girona 22-23. But Quique Cárcel found Savinhoa Brazilian gem, then opted for Dovbyk, the Ukrainian ‘nine’ so that Tsygankov did not feel alone in Montilivi, and upon seeing the couple that Míchel invented at the heart of the team – he chose Aleix García to mix with Yangel Herrera Instead of betting on a single center midfielder to replace Oriol Romeu, he changed his plan.
Girona rebuilt itself with common sense, also proposing fun, choral football (it no longer lives like it did for so many years of Stuani) and, above all, effective. Almost a third of the League has been completed and no one has as many points as this prodigious joint work put together by Míchel and Quique Cárcel.