It is difficult to tame euphoria, happiness. Football is a meaningless sport, capable of reviving in two minutes thousands of people who a moment before were choosing the outfit to attend a funeral and suddenly find themselves at a “rave” party. Balaídos experienced their first great afternoon with Claudio Giráldez, the coach in whom they have placed their faith and who yesterday, to celebrate his renewal, gave them an afternoon of football that they had banished from their memory. Celta recovered from a disastrous first half hour, until they understood the game they should play. And when he did, he unleashed a storm over the Las Palmas area that could have ended in a scandalous victory but, above all, paved the way to salvation.
Giráldez imagined a match the hours before the match that took half an hour to happen. He resorted to a lineup “for sin” that would have given Benítez hives just imagining it, with Carles Pérez and Hugo Alvarez occupying the wings; the surprising Williot in Bamba’s place and Larsen and Aspas in their usual positions. Inspired by the philosophy of Las Palmas and García Pimienta – who likes to carry the weight of the game and suffers after each loss – the Porriñés created a stampede in the dugout after each recovery. But it happened that Celta took half an hour to check if they were still playing with the same brand of ball as last week. They didn’t see it for half an infamous hour in which poor positioning (the defense was too far back) and lack of coordination in the pressure turned the game into a bad joke. The canaries crossed lines and circulated as if their rival had disappeared. No one at Celta arrived on time and that in front of well-rounded footballers, faithful followers of the Canarian school, was an inevitable condemnation. Concern turned to concern when Herzog headed an unopposed corner kick into the net in the eleventh minute. And drama was about to break out if soon afterwards Guaita did not manage to get another header from the yellow centre-back in an action similar to the previous one.
The enthusiasm with which the afternoon started had begun to fade until Carles Pérez, whom Claudio rescued from the closet of broken toys, did the unexpected. Accustomed to coming to the left to threaten with his shot, on this occasion he brought the full-back to the back line – depth, always a solution, absent from Celta’s life for so long – and placed the ball in the heart of the area where Aspas He finished off in the most damaging place. Celta had just found the key to the treasure: Oscar Mingueza. From the central position he makes key decisions in the construction of the game. He is not afraid of pressure, he is calm to find his partner and pauses when he feels threatened by his rival. He plays at sixty emotional beats. The first goal had been born in his boots and just a minute later he broke Las Palmas again with a pass to Aspas to whom the Moañés continued by putting Williot in front of the goalkeeper. The young Swede, elegant and powerful in his career, resolved with the coldness of the chosen ones. Dry blow to the corner. In a couple of minutes born in Mingueza’s peace of mind, Celta had turned around before anguish entered the scene.
Claudio had clearly seen where the space was. His players began to understand it at the end of the first half, but the coach ended up opening their eyes at half-time. The second half was an apotheosis. Celta, intense in the duels, with the lines closer together and without giving meters to the Canaries because they wanted to go with crazy pressure, chose the place on the field where they were going to steal the ball. He did it permanently and from there he shot his arrows into the backs of their defenses. That was the match that Giráldez had designed, but it took a while to happen. Celta flew after each recovery. Carles threatened on one side and the extraordinary Hugo Alvarez on the other; Iago created space behind him and Williot intervened little but always in a damaging way. In that full start to the second half, Mingueza, Beltrán, Williot, Carles and Jailson were able to score. In almost all of them Valles was providential. Determined to do even more damage, Giráldez turned to the player who best attacks space in that situation: Douvikas. To do this he had to act as an understanding but inflexible father with the annoying Larsen. But the decision was manual. The Greek stepped onto the field and a few minutes later he scored the third goal after an assist from Iago Aspas. Las Palmas did not exist. García Pimienta had tried by putting Javi Muñoz on the field but Celta had decided to give themselves a party. Like the university student who is locked up at home for months preparing for final exams and finally goes out on the street. He wants that night to never end. And so Celta was, after months condemned to boredom and feeling worse than he (probably) is: determined that no one would turn off his music. Fifteen minutes from the end Douvikas, always poisonous, handed the fourth to Iago Aspas (two goals and two assists) on a plate and was about to perfect the role of the good Samaritan by giving a goal to Hugo Alvarez, but the young youth squad’s shot went high. A lineup made for revelry had what I was looking for in the midst of the general revelry. The damage could have been greater for García Pimienta’s team, but it became daylight and the nightclub closed.
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2024-04-21 04:10:55
#team #party
