Fans of Spanish football will be accustomed to seeing Real Madrid and a certain Catalan club battle it out at the top of La Liga – only this season that team from northeastern Spain isn’t Barcelona.
It is Girona, playing in only its fourth top-flight season in La Liga, that has improbably become Real’s closest title challenger midway through January, repeatedly upsetting the odds to surge up the standings and sit top of the table, one point ahead of Los Blancos – though Madrid has a game in hand.
Founded in 1930, Girona plays its football at the modest 14,000-capacity Estadi Montilivi on the outskirts of a city that has a population of just 100,000.
For the majority of its history, Girona has competed in the third tier of Spanish football and below, only returning to the second division in 2008 after a 49-year absence.
Girona was previously promoted to La Liga in 2017, spending only two seasons in Spain’s top flight before being relegated. This time, however, the team looks like it is here to stay.
The Blanquivermells’ early success this season has naturally prompted comparisons to Leicester City’s remarkable Premier League-winning season and Spanish football expert Semra Hunter believes those comparisons are merited.
With Real and Girona seven and eight points respectively up on third-placed Barça at the head of the chasing pack, this season is already looking likely to be a two-horse race.
“I tell you what, why not?” Hunter said when asked if Girona can win the league. “Because they’ve beaten Atlético Madrid, who are one of the favorites for the title this season. They beat Barcelona, who are the reigning champions, another title contender.
“They only lost to Real Madrid. They drew with Real Sociedad, who are another contender to finish top four. I mean, they are taking down the big teams and they’re doing so in quite some style, so I think, at this stage, I think we can dare to dream. Why not?
“Let’s get carried away with this fairy-tale story. It’s a beautiful story. History is being made and, at the very least, I think they’re going to be in the Champions League next season. Any team at this stage that has had this amount of points has always qualified for the Champions League. So I would say that’s a pretty big win no matter what.”
Girona also boasts the additional benefit of not having to play European football, which could turn Real’s focus away from the league once the Champions League knockout stage begins in February, while Ancelotti’s side also had to deal with the rigors of flying to Saudi Arabia to play two Spanish Super Cup matches.
Míchel, ma belle
There are a multitude of factors that have contributed to Girona’s rise, but perhaps principle among them is the manager leading the team: Miguel Ángel Sánchez Muñoz, better known as Míchel.
A Madrid boy born and raised, Míchel is an icon at boyhood club Rayo Vallecano after spending the majority of his playing career there across two spells.
After managing Rayo and then Huesca, Míchel took the reins at Girona in 2021 when the club was back in Spain’s competitive second division. He got the club promoted at the first time of asking and then consolidated with an impressive 10th-place finish last season.
Girona CEO Ignasi Mas-Bagà says Míchel deserves “a lot of credit” for the team’s recent success.
“It’s his third season with us now and I think the players now really understand what he wants, the style of play,” Mas-Bagà told CNN Sport’s Patrick Snell.
“He wants to keep the ball, a lot of possession and to score goals – and we’re the team that’s scored the most goals in the league.
“Positively, we can say that the job during the week [in training] is translated on the pitch with results.”
But while Girona’s progress has been clear for all to see, nobody would have expected the huge leap the team has taken this season – and Míchel has been doing it in style.
So entertaining is his brand of football, that Hunter says it feels like “every single match for Girona is the match of the season,” typified by the team’s thrilling 4-3 victory over Atlético Madrid on January 3.
“He’s really taken to the Catalan lifestyle like a duck to water,” she explains. “He learned Catalan very quickly. He’s won over the fans, he’s won over the board. He’s young, he’s intelligent, he’s ambitious, he’s driven. He’s incredibly good with his players.
“He pays a lot of attention to detail as well. The fine tuning of what needs to happen during a game or in the lead up to the game. He has a brilliant group of players that are very much a collective. There is no superstar in the side – they very much are a strong team as a unit.
“I think part of it has to do with the fact that the board have been so incredibly intelligent in listening to their manager and listening to what was needed and saying: ‘Right, let’s be really smart about how we go into the market in the summer, how we build a team. What specifically are the profiles of the players that we need?’”
Recruitment
In 2017, the City Football Group (CFG), which owns Manchester City, purchased a majority stake in Girona, which is now one of 13 clubs under the CFG umbrella.
However, as Hunter explains, being owned by one of the wealthiest clubs in the world doesn’t automatically provide Girona with a bottomless pit of money and the club has continued to be “very resourceful” and “very smart” when scouting and signing players on a “small” budget.
Of the current squad, only impressive young defender Yan Couto is on loan from parent club City, though Yangel Herrera, Aleix García and Eric García have also previously been on the books.
While much of Girona’s success stems from the team being more than the sum of its parts, Ukrainian forward Artem Dovbyk, who arrived from SC Dnipro-1 in the summer, has emerged as a potent goal threat with 11 goals in 18 league appearances.
Additionally, Mas-Bagà says Míchel can often pick the brain of City manager Pep Guardiola when the pair “speak from time to time” about football.
“They have a lot of similarities,” he says. “They speak the same language of football and I know they speak after some games and they get on very well.
“I think this is also very positive [for Girona] and I think Pep is an inspiration for Míchel.”
Despite Girona’s historic start to the campaign, Hunter says the team will be wary of a Real Madrid side that has continued to churn out wins behind La Liga’s most stingy defense, despite not playing well for large parts of the season.
But as Ancelotti begins welcoming players back from injury, it is inevitable that a team whose “DNA is all about winning” will be in the hunt come the end of the season, particularly off the back of Real’s impressive goalscoring performances – netting nine goals against rivals Atlético and Barça – as it went on to lift the Spanish Super Cup.
Regardless, Girona has earned the right to dream and Hunter says upsetting the odds and winning La Liga “would mean everything” to the club and its fans.
“It’s the ultimate underdog story,” she says. “It’s David versus Goliath and seeing an outlier like a Girona, which historically is a basketball city and has only been in the top flight ever four times, it would be absolutely monumental.”