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Graham Hunter, Spain writer
Given that I’ve lived in Spain for nearly a quarter of a century, I’ve been a first-hand witness to the most extraordinary footballing moments. I’ve seen Valencia twice win LaLiga, the rise and fall of Madrid’s Galactico era, Barcelona twice winning the fabled treble, Sevilla smashing their way into the Guinness Book of Records by making the Europa League personal property, The whites winning the first hat trick of Champions League titles since Bayern Munich in the mid-1970s. And so much more.
I followed the best footballer the world has ever seen, Lionel Messifrom the beginning to the end of his remarkable LaLiga career. I even went step-by-step with Spain as they did what no other national team in history has done: win the continental-world-continental crown sequential treble, when they claimed Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012 in succession.
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So it’s only after due care and careful thought that I honestly contend: Sunday’s LaLiga games — health 3-2 Getafe; Real Madrid 3-2 Almeria; Betis 2-4 Barcelona; Getafe 5-1 Sevilla — were the best, most thrilling, most exciting, dramatic and surprising quartet of consecutive matches I’ve ever seen. They weren’t the four greatest football matches of my life or career — simply the most fascinating, engrossing and impactful consecutive contests I’ve ever seen packed into one afternoon and evening.
Across six-and-a-half hours, we saw a goal approximately every 17 minutes, but this is definitely more than just that story. These were, for the most part, magnificent, shimmering contests.
Weren’t you watching? Well, I feel sorry for you, but as a service, here’s a whistle-stop tour of what you missed.
Stop 1: Osasuna’s triumph in Pamplona, where a hand-to-hand battle peppered with genuinely fabulous goals — check out the glorious left-footed volley from Inaki Munoz and the impishly clever header from Nemanja Maksimovic — was clinched by the most improbable winner I’ve ever seen.
Right-back Jesus Areso is boxed-in right on the Getafe corner flag and Getafe defender Jordi Martin is charging him down: the distance between the two men was less than half a foot. Areso, who’s never scored a professional goal, looks like he’ll do well to win a corner. In cinematic terms, he’s hanging off the cliff edge with the triumphant bad guy preparing to step on his hands and send him into a thousand-foot deep, crocodile infested ravine.
Somehow — and he’ll never, ever know how — Areso swings his boot, nutmegs his opponent and the ball, with total geometrical improbability, flies along the touchline towards David Soria‘s front post before somehow soaring upwards, over the keeper, and violently dipping right, bouncing into the net off the far post. Watch it for yourself and tell me that, even once you’ve seen it, it doesn’t look outright impossible.
Stop 2: In Sevilla against Betis, Barcelona become the first team in Spanish top division history to field two 16-year-old players in the first team — bar one other occasion when there was a professional-player strike in the 1980s — and despite a sublime onslaught by the hosts, led by Iscothey not only won 4-2, but produced their best football of the campaign by a long, long way.
The highlights? Well, the third hat trick of Ferran Torres‘ career was impressive to watch, Isco’s two goals in just under four minutes were footballing lava — an explosion of heat, power and menace — and John Felix produced a finish (to make it 3-2 Barca) that was both genius and worth Luka Modric sending the Portugal forward an image-rights bill for 15%. (Clue: The goal owed everything to Felix mimicking Modric’s trademark use of the outside of his right boot.)
But the absolute highlight of this match was the sumptuous and uplifting magnificence of Lamine Yamal. Ninety-six minutes of technique, quality, intelligence and daring that should simply be out of reach for a 16-year-old playing in this or any top division. The cherry on the icing — and please seek this out — was the visionary assist he gives for Torres’ hat trick goal.
No-one ever, not Michel Platini, Roberto Baggio, Roberto Mancini, Andres Iniesta, Kaka, Xavi or Zinedine Zidane, can say with authority that they’ve set up a goal in finer fashion. As good? Maybe. More often? Certainly, given that this is a teenager in his breakthrough season. But not outright better. That’s how special it was.
Stop 3: Next we visit the Primera Division leaders in Catalunya. Some chumps (me for one) thought that Sevilla might take a point from their visit to Girona. Not only were the current Europa League champions soundly thrashed, but Artem Dovbyk scored a six-and-a-half minute hat trick! (I’ll be clear: Jude Bellingham is Spain’s signing of the season by far, but pound-for-pound in LaLiga, the Ukraine international has been better value, having out-done the Englishman’s stats so far, with 14 goals/four assists compared to 14 goals/one assist, having cost only a €7m transfer fee.)
It was the kind of mean-eyed destruction of a rival that you’d expect from one of Europe’s Old regime — clubs like Bayern Munich, Madrid, Liverpool, AC MilanBarcelona, Juventus or Manchester United at their absolute finest. It was strategically superior and utterly ruthless, an absolute thrill to watch. Viva the underdog!
Part of my point in eulogising what was on show — the drama, the skill, the improbability, the packed stadia and overall magnificence — is to draw your attention to the fact that wherever you consumed your LaLiga action on Sunday and Monday, there’s a good chance that none of the above was what dominated the agenda.
The missing match is, of course, Madrid’s ultra-dramatic 3-2 win over rock-bottom Almeria.
The visitors, still on course to register LaLiga’s lowest-ever points total and near-certain relegation, led 2-0 at the Bernabeu and their second goal, a vicious left-footed half-volley from their central defender, Edgar Gonzalezstood comparison with any that I’ve praised from the other three matches. It was an absolute rocket.
And from there, Madrid’s fightback was as controversial as it was explosive and stunning. Their first goal, a penalty given after a VAR review, probably shouldn’t have been awarded because before the evident handball, there was at least one foul, by Antonio Rüdigerthat was ignored.
Their second goal was, in my opinion, correctly given (after a VAR review) because the FIFA laws show that a part of the arm is not illegal for use; at worst, Vinicius’ technique for scoring was somewhere between his shoulder and the crucial “t-shirt line,” which deems contact with the ball legal.
When we judge whether the ball has gone for a throw, a corner, or in for a goal we use the expression that it must be “wholly over the line.” In the case of Vinicius’ goal, which on Monday he gleefully claimed was the product of techniques he honed on the Copacabana beach, the ball hits him, at the absolute worst, halfway above the legal “t-shirt line” and halfway below it, which means that it couldn’t be considered a handball and therefore was a goal, in my opinion.
The third major controversy was that, in the build-up to what still seems a legitimate third Almeria goal, Dion Lopy extends his hand and fingers behind him, lightly brushing Bellingham’s cheek and neck in the process. Whether or not you think it’s a foul, I’d argue two things. Firstly, if Bellingham had been the guy penalised for that moment, I believe he’d have been outraged at any opponent making a fuss, claiming to have been fouled.
Secondly, and most importantly, referee Hernandez Maeso was within about three metres of the moment, staring straight at it; there was absolutely no case for VAR to enter into the fray, ask him to take a second look at it and therefore create a situation where the inexperienced ref (in only his 10th LaLiga match and his first experience in charge of Real Madrid — changed his mind, having not thought anything of the “offence” when he watched it at close proximity in the first place.
Look: it’s feasible to detail all these incidents in a calm, objective, reasonable way. However, that sadly hasn’t been the case either in Spain or in the “pebble in a pond” ripples that reverberate throughout the football world. Terms like “robbery,” “attack” and “scandal” have proliferated amid an uncontrolled, immature stream of knee-jerk outpouring of bile, stupidity and fury — almost all of which has been over the top and completely unnecessary. Moreover, that reaction has unhappily obscured the things we’re really here for: the talent, fun, creativity, daring, improbability, genius and thrills that major level sport has always, and will always, provide us. With or without controversy.
And it was for all those beautiful components of top-level football that Matchday 21 in Spain was memorable — not for the “was it or wasn’t it?” fury in the Bernabeu, nor the incessantly angry and immature ranting that has followed them.
