The alarm went off again at Ipurúa on Wednesday, siren echoing around the Ego valley as if there was an air raid coming, but it was nothing to fear. Although the noise assaults eardrums, loud, piercing and heard all across Eibar, it’s a source of comfort now, not concern. Cause for celebration, too. For years the siren wailed at 7.3am every morning to wake up workers employed in the Alfa metal factory, a cooperative where they made Smith and Wesson revolvers, Singer sewing machines and bicycles, until one day production was moved out of town. The factory was knocked down yet the silence didn’t last for ever. Now it’s the sound of success: SD Eibar, the club from a tiny town of 27,000 on the verge of going from regional football to Europe in five years. Unless two of Spain’s other great overachievers can stop them.
After decades of being blasted out in the morning, lunchtime and at the end of the day, the siren had become such a symbol of the town that Roberto Vergara decided he had to intervene. For five years he had it in his garage. He cleaned and fixed it but while it had been used to open the local fiestas, mostly it went unheard, exhibited in the town’s industrial museum until, some time in 2008-09, Roberto took it to the football ground. It was put up in the south stand and they set it off whenever Eibar scored. It didn’t bring them much luck that year – Eibar were relegated – but it’s been going off a lot since. On Wednesday night it sounded at 9.44pm – for the 24th time this season.
Fabián Orellana’s long, perfectly placed diagonal pass found Pedro León and he guided it across the face of goal for Kike García to hit it in off the post. It was Eibar’s only shot on target all game, which is unusual for them – only Madrid, Barcelona, and Real Sociedad have taken more – but it was enough to defeat sixth-placed Villarreal 1-0. It was also enough to take them to within three points of their opponents and above Getafe and Girona into seventh – which, because fifth-placed Sevilla are in the Copa del Rey final against Barcelona, will almost certainly be the final European position.
In the small manager’s office under the stand, the walls are lined with pennants handed over before games going back years. Most of them are from the Basque Country, small towns and smaller clubs you’ve probably never heard of, like Sestao, Tudelano, Alfaro, Santutxo, Urduliz, Arenas de Armilla. They mark Eibar’s journey from the Second Division B, Spain’s third tier, which is in fact anything from a third to a seventh tier – an 80-team, four division, regionalised, theoretically amateur league – and which they only left in 2013. Now they’re on the edge of Europe. And while they have been here before – they were close last season, but finished 10th – that doesn’t diminish what they’ve done or what they’re doing.
Better still, it’s not only Eibar. It’s not just the fact that they are there that is extraordinary, it is who is there with them. Look at the table and the three teams competing for that final European place are Eibar in seventh on 38 points; Girona in eighth on 37; and Getafe in ninth on 36. It’s true that Betis play Real Sociedad on Thursday and could climb a point above them all – but this round of midweek fixtures proved again that there’s competition in Spain, whatever they say. Espanyol defeated Real Madrid; Atlético are four points behind Barcelona, who play at Las Palmas on Thursday; and Eibar, Girona and Getafe all showed that their European challenge is serious – even if they’d rather not admit it.
On Tuesday, a single goal saw Girona beat Celta de Vigo, who began Week 26 ahead of the three of them. Girona have now won five home games in a row without conceding a goal and have lost just one in eight (against Barcelona). On Wednesday night in the pouring rain, Getafe beat Deportivo, who may well be sunk – but it finished 3-0 just as it had against Celta nine days earlier, and they too have lost once in eight, a run that includes draws with Athletic, Sevilla and Barcelona. Then, after fans helped clear 15cm of snow from the pitch, Eibar also won. And if they might have relied a little on Marco Dimitrovic, it was Villarreal, whose hold on a European place, for so long assumed, no longer looks so assured.
“The fact we have 37 points deserves a lot of credit,” Getafe manager José Bordalás said. After his Girona team beat Athletic a fortnight ago, Pablo Machín was asked to describe his team in a word. “One?” he replied. “Ok, I’ll use the longest word I know: supercalifragilisticoespialidoso.” And, yes, that is what you think it is. For those in the press room at Montilivi who didn’t get it, he handily translated too. “In our vernacular, this team is the hostia,” he said. The hostia is the consecrated bread, the holy host, the body of Christ made wafer. The dog’s testicles, in other words. Then, the week after that, José Luis Mendilíbar conceded, a little reluctantly, that what his team is doing is “extraordinary”.
He was right; they all were.
Look at the table again. Now look at these tables. La Liga operating budget, bottom three: Getafe, Girona, Eibar. TV income, bottom three: Getafe, Girona, Eibar. Expenditure, bottom three: Eibar, Girona, Getafe. In total income, they are three of the bottom four, with Leganés. In average attendance, they are three of the bottom four, with Leganés. And when it comes to the number of seasons in the first division, they’re three of the bottom five, with Leganés and Levante. Getafe and Girona are newly-promoted; Girona have never been here before; Eibar are in the fourth season of their only ever spell in primera. Between them, they’ve played just 15 complete first division seasons.
Mendilíbar recently said he didn’t know how Eibar had conned Orellana into playing for them when he should be at “one of those teams that’s supposed to be up there”. His top scorer Charles twice scored 12, for Celta in 2013-14 and for Málaga 2015-16, but two of Charles’s last three seasons finished with just three goals, and the clubs’ strikers tell a different story. Kike is in only his third top flight season and is already close to his best-ever total: seven. At Girona, another former Boro player, Christhian Stuani, is enjoying his best-ever season on 13, and so is Portu, who’d only ever played one primera game before but is the first player this season to score against Barcelona, Atlético, Madrid and Valencia. Getafe’s top scorer is Ángel, on 11; aged 31, he’s been round the block, but his previous best in primera was just two goals. “My experiences here hadn’t gone well; I didn’t expect so many goals,” he admits. “I knew we’d fight, but no one imagined we’d be so high up.”
At the start of the season, Eibar, Getafe and Girona all had the same objective: survival. Forty points is the usual target but over the last five years survival’s been clinched with 35, 39, 35, 40 and 37 points and this year the threshold is likely to be even lower. All of which means that, with 12 games left, and 38, 37, and 36 points respectively, they’ve made it. It’s not just the results that have been good; the teams have been good too. Eibar are intense and relentless, delivering cross after cross; Girona have overrun opponents, who are unable to get to grips with their 3-5-2 formation; Getafe are, in their manager’s words, “very well balanced, defensively strong”; they’re also hard as nails. They’ve done it in different ways, but they’ve done it, and deservedly so. Europe next?
“Not at all,” Bordalás said. “It’s not a mask I’m hiding behind, it’s a reality,” he insisted. And yet for La Liga’s great overachievers, it’s not impossible. “Even I can’t believe this run and, looking at the way things are, we’ll pass that first test, survival, ahead of time,” Machín said. “But we have to keep our feet on the floor … that’s the only way to go to Europe.” At Ipurua the following night, the siren wailed and Iñaki Bea, Eibar’s assistant coach beamed, his team safe. “It’s done,” he said, speaking for all of them. “Now we have to look beyond that, find another objective. Hell, it’s time to dream.”
Talking points
• After Barcelona beat Girona 6-1 at the weekend, the sneery headline in El Español, the paper launched by the former editor of El Mundo, ran: “Barcelona and Girona play out what a Catalan league would look like”. Considering that Barcelona and Girona had both beaten Real Madrid, it looked a little silly . By Tuesday night, it looked even sillier, when a last-minute strike by the brilliant Gerard Moreno (who has scored almost 50% of his team’s goals this season) carried Espanyol to victory. Although they’re an odd team, swinging from really quite good to really quite irrelevant, they have now beaten Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético this season, and all of them 1-0 with goals beyond the 88th minute. It also means all of Catalonia’s teams have beaten Madrid and all of them have taken points off Atlético too. Now, pointing that out probably isn’t really fair on Madrid or Atlético, and doesn’t change the fact that of course a hypothetical Catalan league would be weak, but it is a neat response to a silly headline. Madrid have now been beaten as many times this season as in Zidane’s first two seasons put together.
• Three days, seven goals. And next up, the Camp Nou. Antoine Griezmann scored a hat-trick against Sevilla on Sunday. On Wednesday he scored four more, becoming only the third Atlético player to score back-to-back hat-tricks and the first to do so for almost 80 years. The first was beautifully made by Koke, with a stunning pass, while the assists from Filipe Luís and Costa were tasty too. Oh, and there was a wonderful free-kick in there as well. Two of them actually – one hit the post, the other the net. Atlético are flying. “Griezmann scares Barcelona,” said the cover of AS. Inside, they gave him four marks. Out of three.
• Deportivo and Málaga: dreadful … and probably doomed.
• El Molinón bade farewell to Quini, who passed away this week, aged 68. A great player, a better person. It’s a cliché, but it’s true.
Espanyol 1-0 Real Madrid, Girona 1–0 Celta, Getafe 3–0 Deportivo, Málaga 0–1 Sevilla, Athletic 1–1 Valencia, Eibar 1–0 Villarreal, Atlético 1–0 Leganés. Thursday: Betis-Real Sociedad, Las Palmas-Barcelona, Alavés-Levante.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Barcelona | 25 | 56 | 65 |
| 2 | Atletico Madrid | 26 | 34 | 61 |
| 3 | Valencia | 26 | 20 | 50 |
| 4 | Real Madrid | 26 | 32 | 49 |
| 5 | Sevilla | 26 | -6 | 42 |
| 6 | Villarreal | 26 | 6 | 41 |
| 7 | Eibar | 26 | -5 | 38 |
| 8 | Girona | 26 | 0 | 37 |
| 9 | Getafe | 26 | 10 | 36 |
| 10 | Real Betis | 25 | -7 | 36 |
| 11 | Celta Vigo | 26 | 5 | 35 |
| 12 | Athletic Bilbao | 26 | -2 | 32 |
| 13 | Leganes | 26 | -9 | 31 |
| 14 | Espanyol | 26 | -9 | 31 |
| 15 | Real Sociedad | 25 | 0 | 29 |
| 16 | Alaves | 25 | -15 | 28 |
| 17 | Levante | 25 | -19 | 20 |
| 18 | Las Palmas | 25 | -34 | 19 |
| 19 | Deportivo La Coruna | 26 | -32 | 18 |
| 20 | Malaga | 26 | -25 | 13 |
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