The curious case of Real Sociedad’s victory over Sevilla in La Liga
The first explosion went off not long after at 12.15, followed immediately by another. And then another, and another, and another, Bang! Bang! Bang! For 90 minutes it went on, 11 explosions in all, crashing through the Basque sky, growing increasingly frequent until San Sebastián fell silent and the people emerged, stepping wide-eyed out into the street, relieved and rejoicing, dressed in blue and white. They were safe at last. Real Sociedad had won.The tradition began as a way of informing fisherman out in the Bay of Biscay of the score at Real Sociedad’s old Atocha ground and it continues at Anoeta, too: bangers are set off to mark the goals, two for every goal that la Real score, one for every goal their opponents score. By the end of Sunday’s lunchtime kick-off against Sevilla those following from afar knew, if they had not lost count, that Real Sociedad had won 4-3. What they did not know was how – but then those following from inside Anoeta did not really know that either. A day later, they still don’t.
Real Sociedad led twice, trailed once and won it in the last minute. There were two penalties given, one of them mysteriously, and another one not given, just as mysteriously. There were ridiculous misses and an even more ridiculous own goal, a referee called Fernando Teixeira Vitienes I – and yes, there really is a Teixeira Vitienes II – and two posts hit, one from 40 yards, one from four. There was decisive keeping and dodgy keeping. There were seven goals, six of them from dead balls, five of them in the second half and four of them for la Real – the same Real whose recent goalscoring run in La Liga reads: 2, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0.
Oh and there were 17 shots.
Each.
Nineteen different players had a go at goal, six different players managed to put one in the net. One of them wished he hadn’t. The only player to score two, including the 90th-minute winner, was the club captain, the youth teamer from San Sebastián who made his debut 12 years ago and never abandoned his club even when they went down to the second division. Eight footballers went into the notebook under yellow cards. There was one bloody eye and this was one bloody good game. “Anoeta becomes a lunatic asylum,” ran the headline in AS. Marca dubbed it a “theme park”, rollercoaster rides a speciality. El Diario Vasco called it “insane” and El País called it “mad”.
“There are university toga parties duller than this,” cheered José Luis Hurtado in Marca. “The fans enjoyed that,” said the full-back Alberto de la Bella, “but they suffered too.”
And yet somehow that still did not quite explain it. Minute by minute? Second by second, more like. In the last half an hour, in particular, it was impossible to keep up, the ticker spewing out and on the floor, paper everywhere, like a toilet roll between a puppy’s teeth.
Imanol Agirretxe gave la Real the lead with a neat finish on 16 minutes. Sergio Canales then ran through to make it 2-0 but instead of hitting the net, tore up the turf and his toe with an attempted chip that went horribly wrong, resembling a snooker player ripping the cloth. Real Sociedad were playing their best football of the season, seemingly in control, but Timothée Kolodziejczak made it 1-1 just before half-time. Real Sociedad won a penalty on 47 minutes, although no one really knew what for. From 12 yards Xabi Prieto made it 18 penalties taken, 17 scored – and then it started.
Sevilla certainly started. “Over” in Spanish is “arriba” and Alejandro Arribas was as good as his word. He slid in and put the ball off the bar and over from three yards. Forty seconds later Daniel Carriço walloped a 40-yarder off the post. On 68 minutes Carlos Bacca made it 2-2, getting kicked in the face as he headed in. The nominative determinism continued: la Real keeper Gerónimo Rulli charged off his line, somehow not giving away a penalty despite launching a karate kick on Diogo Figueiras. He went down, the ball went up and Benoît Trémoulinas headed goalwards, only for Ion Ansotegi to head off the line. That penalty wasn’t given, a moment later a penalty was. A shot off Iñigo Martínez’s elbow allowed Kévin Gameiro, on for the bleeding Bacca, to make it 2-3.
There were 12 minutes left and Sevilla deserved it; for 25 minutes they had battered la Real – but there was more. Sergio Rico pushed over Rubén Pardo’s shot. Prieto crossed, the ball hit Rico’s fist, hit Ansotegi back and looped up. It was headed back in by Esteban Granero, headed back out again by Arribas and volleyed in again by Agirretxe, where Éver Banega booted it out again … off the legs of Arribas and into the net. Dink-boing-boing-boing-boing-thump-wallop-whoops-goal: seven touches without the ball hitting the floor, one bounce and it was in the net. There were eight minutes left. Rico stopped Chori Castro, then pushed Pablo Hervías’s shot away. From the corner, Prieto headed home, 4-3, two loud bangs, one minute left.
Down on the touchline David Moyes leapt into the air, arm raised. Up in the stands they were going as mad as the game – and then the final whistle went, fans heading for the exit rubbing their eyes, still not sure what had happened. Real Sociedad had defeated Sevilla, just as they had defeated Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid here; unable to beat the small teams, they had beaten the biggest. In an empty stadium, nets hanging loosely from the bar, Prieto, the man who scored the winner, the “captain who came to the rescue” as one headline put it, kicked a ball about with his son Jon, still in his kit, heartbeat slowly returning to normal. “We needed this,” he admitted.
They certainly did. It had been a good week’s work at Zubieta for la Real. The team have grown fitter of late, responding well to double sessions, and Moyes has been impressed with their response and eagerness to learn. He is increasingly clear about which players fit his system and which do not; bit by bit his identity is being seen in the team, there’s a glimpse of the personality he seeks. However, it has not been easy: the manager admits it is not possible to play with the intensity he wants in Spain, not least because referees set the bar lower than he would like, results have still not been great and pressure built. They failed to make any signings in the winter window, meaning the lack of bite in the middle and the lack of speed wide remained. Worse, they had lost Carlos Vela to injury. In 10 games without him, la Real had not won.
Real Sociedad went into this game 12th, only five points off the relegation zone, three wins, three defeats and six draws in 12 under Moyes. It was billed as one that would define their season, deciding their focus for the final 14 games. El Diario Vasco declared it the match that would determine if they would be riding in the “engine room, covered in steam and soot”, or whether they would instead travel “in the dining car”. Where they would be probably drinking coffee and smoking big cigars. “A win would might not be decisive but it would be very big; a defeat … well, it’s doesn’t bear thinking about,” the paper wrote.
When Gameiro scored the penalty all the good work seemed to be unravelling. Canales’s chance would have made it safe; instead, with 12 minutes left, another lead had been blown. Another late goal was set to cost them points. La Real had scored after only 16 minutes, just as they had scored after three minutes against Elche, three against Athletic, two against Real Madrid, and eight against Celta, but it had not always done them much good: of those games they had only beaten Elche.
Moyes had complained his team had been unable to maintain the intensity and energy he wants for 90 minutes; too many results had slipped away from them late on. Real Madrid had beaten them 4-1 and Athletic equalised to make it 1-1 61 minutes into the Basque derby, which is not so dramatic but Celta equalised in the 85th minute, Rayo beat them 1-0 with an 81st-minute goal, Granada equalised to make it 1-1 in the 79th minute and against Levante there was a 93rd-minute equaliser from Andreas Ivanschitz – which is pretty much what Moyes thought of it.
In other words, in only 12 games under Moyes, they lost nine points in the last half an hour of games, seven in the last 11 minutes – the difference between starting this weekend within reach of seventh and starting this weekend 17th. Now it was happening again.
Only this time it didn’t happen. Lose and la Real would have been 15th this morning, level with Deportivo, Almería and Elche, only four points above Granada and Levante, who play on Monday night. Instead, the win put them 10th, eight points clear of the relegation zone and into the top half for the first time since week three, overhauling Eibar to become the division’s best Basque team and gaining themselves some breathing space at last. “This win was necessary to pull us away from there,” Prieto said. Fourteen points in 14 weeks should be sufficient for survival now but the target may even become a higher one than that.
La Real were not always brilliant; an impressive first half gave way to a second half in which they were on the ropes and fortunate to win. However, in the past two weeks, without Vela, they have scored four and two, having previously never scored more than one in nine league games. Better still, after a seven-game run in which they had drawn four times from leading positions and lost another with a late goal at 0-0, they have now come from behind two weeks running, after twice equalising against Almería last week. That reveals a change in character that is significant and this result will surely strengthen them for the rest of the season. The fans enjoyed it, too. Eventually. “When you win, it makes people happy and when you win in the last minute it’s even more exciting,” Moyes smiled.
“We’ll have to watch the DVD again to work out what happened,” Kolodziejczak said, speaking for everyone.
Talking points
• Ooops, they did it again. You’d think they’d learn but they never do. “Today we go to sleep leaders,” cheered the front cover of the Catalan daily Sport on Saturday morning.*
Well, they were half right. Barcelona slept and Barcelona were beaten, one word getting repeated over and over in the papers on Sunday: “siesta.” Another 4pm kick-off, another flat performance and so an 11-game winning run came to an end with a 1-0 defeat against Málaga and all the doubts came back again. Not that it was all about Barcelona: Málaga not only defended superbly, reducing Barcelona to only three shots on target all game – and three in total against them this season – but created enough chances to have won by more, racking up more shots than the home side. Javi Gracia’s impressive work continues. When they turned up to training on Sunday morning more than a thousand fans were there waiting, chanting and cheering, welcoming their heroes home.
* (That’s a Catalan daily called Sport, by the way, not a Catalan version of the Daily Sport … although that would be fun).
• So, erm, tell me, how did that go again? Shall we do it again? Oh, go on then. You’d think they’d learn etc and so on. “Tonight, leaders and [Messi] Pichichi,” ran the headline in El Mundo Deportivo. Instead, Messi didn’t score and Ronaldo did. And Barcelona didn’t win and Madrid did. The gap is one goal and four points now after a 2-0 win at Elche in which Madrid showed signs of returning to form. Isco, in particular, was superb and he was given a standing ovation as he left the pitch. “I applauded, too,” admitted the Elche president, José Sepulcre.
• It was Friday so it is long forgotten, if anyone even noticed it at the time, but there was another win for Getafe. That’s three in their last five now – and Sarabia was superb. This game also included the goal of the week – an absolute belter scored by Anaitz Arbilla.
• Has anyone worked out what the Atlético penalty was for yet? Nope. Still, they were impressive again in a 3-0 win against Almería. And Antoine Griezmann scored two more, taking his total to 14 in the league. He’s scored more goals in 2015 than anyone other than Messi and is combining brilliantly with Mario Mandzukic. Signing of the season?
• Aritz Aduriz, who else? He got the late winner for Athletic against Rayo. That puts all three Basque teams in a row now: Real Sociedad 10th, Eibar 11th, Athletic 12th. Eibar have now lost five in a row. Before every game the coach, Gaizka Garitano, whacks his players in the chest as they run out on to the pitch. “I’m going to have to starting hitting them harder”, he says.
• The LFP has reported a section of Real Betis’s fans for a truly horrible chant they sang to the striker Rubén Castro. Castro is due in court charged with four counts of violence against his former girlfriend and one charge of threatening behaviour. Betis’s fans sang: “Rubén Castro, alé / Rubén Castro, alé / It’s not your fault / She was a whore / You did the right thing.”
Results Getafe 2-1 Espanyol, Barcelona 0-1 Málaga, Córdoba 1-2 Valencia, Atlético 3-0 Almería, Deportivo 0-2 Celta, Real Sociedad 4-3 Sevilla, Athletic 1-0 Rayo, Villarreal 1-0 Eibar, Elche 0-2 Real Madrid,
Tonight Levante v Granada.
By Sid Lowe, Guardian