Through the big door. Literally throwing her down. Scoring eight goals against Barça, four in Montjuïc and four in Montilivi. Exceeding all their dreams to settle in the Champions League for the first time in their history. Putting themselves on the map of world football with greatness. The entire football planet already knows who Girona is. That team that never gives up, that fights, that comes back again and again, that strikes and plays like a movie. With indestructible faith, with commendable magic and with an impressive ability to win and to do so in an entertaining way.
Girona matches are like life. They take many turns, they are an up and down, a ferris wheel of emotions. But unlike life, where the sweet mixes with the bitter, everything has been a fairy tale for Míchel’s team since last August. At first you might think it was a mirage. After that it was the typical revelation team that would fall apart. But week after week they exceeded expectations until they lived days as a leader. To the point that it was thought that he could fight for the championship. It is true that away from home the tone has lowered but also that with another, less unapproachable leader, Madrid could have gone to the end with title options.
Losing them did not upset Girona, who celebrated their qualification for the Champions League in style. With the footballers wearing a commemorative shirt, with Montilivi jumping and dancing, like a festival, and with the music of the Champions League playing at full blast.
Before the match Míchel declared: “If we win our fans will be happy because there are many kids whose parents and grandparents are Barça and they will be able to go home and tell them that they are from the second team of Catalonia.”
At the moment this is the case because Girona is ahead of Barcelona in the standings and if the championship ends as it does now, they will also play the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia to the detriment of the Barcelona fans.
Everything seems possible for this Girona that two years ago was fighting to climb to First Division and that has now established itself in the nobility of European football. What immeasurable merit of this dream tamer that is Míchel, who adapted like a glove to the culture of Girona, who lovingly embraced Catalan and who immediately put the entire city in his pocket. An excited Míchel went to the stands to kiss his family fifteen seconds before the end of the game. “Míchel català”, the fans sang to him on several occasions.
He had enormous reasons for happiness, among them having bet on Portu’s return to Girona on the last day of the market. The club also had the option of taking Keita Baldé but the coach preferred Portu, a footballer who had already been in the club in a previous stage, dancing between Second and First, but always with modesty. The brave Portu certified the reaction against Barcelona like a cyclone. An unbeatable example of the transformation of Girona.
Míchel’s team had just written a period epic. Because as he repeats, it is not just about what but about how, that people remember that this League, beyond Madrid’s title (a fact that has been repeated ad nauseam in history), is the Girona League. In its fourth season in the elite of Spanish football, Montilivi’s team has taken a great leap forward.
With 23 wins and 73 goals in 34 games (more than two goals per game), Girona led by striker Dovbyk, players who seemed worthless elsewhere such as David López, Miguel Gutiérrez or Eric Garcia and the phenomenal Savinho have achieved the unthinkable. . And how
