When Celta defeated Sevilla at the Sánchez Pizjuán (1-2) on March 17 in Claudio Giráldez’s debut on the celestial bench, Iago Aspas, who was still walking on the pitch after having played the 90 minutes, retaliated: “This is how we have to play! Even if we lose, let it at least be like that, which is what we know how to do,” the captain was heard saying after the club president, Marián Mouriño, dared a few days before to dispense with Rafa Benítez’s defensive proposal and opted for Giráldez, a coach of the house who is only 36 years old – the youngest in First Division with 37 days younger than Íñigo Pérez, of Rayo – who had already built a prestige in the world of football after taking the reserve team to the play-off promotion to Second with a dominant model and protagonist with the ball.
The anecdote about Aspas’ relief and satisfaction also symbolizes the feeling that the vast majority of the fans experienced. celtin in that match. After months of enduring the poor results produced by Benítez’s stingy proposal, based on defensive rigor – with a 4-4-2 planted in its own half for long stretches in many matches – and the counterattack, the fans saw how the team stood up in the Andalusian capital just two points away from relegation without complexes and with an opposite model.
Giráldez, surrounded by almost the same young coaching staff that accompanied him at Celta B, opted for his usual 3-4-3, giving the opportunity as a starter for the first time in the League to youth player Hugo Álvarez – called up these days with the U21 – and the team seemed different: they controlled possession 65% of the time, spent most of the match in Sevilla’s field and finished 18 times – compared to 11 of the rival – to add the first victory of the Giráldez era, a coach with two university careers—Sports Sciences and Journalism—that he spent as a player in the Real Madrid and Atlético youth teams and that as a coach—on Wednesday he renewed until 2027, two more seasons—he forged himself in the Celta youth ranks, with such celebrated victories. and remembered by Celtismo as the one they achieved with the reserve team in Riazor against the eternal rival, Deportivo, in October 2023.
The coach of O Porriño (Pontevedra, 20,562 inhabitants) has taken care of the youth players whom he had already coached in the lower categories, unlike Rafa Benítez, with whom last March a streak of 675 games – 15 years – was broken. in which the team had initially lined up a footballer trained in A Madroa or in the new sports city. Giráldez has pampered and squeezed one of the hallmarks of the club, the youth team that gives Celta roots in Vigo and the surrounding area, by giving a reel and getting Hugo Álvarez himself (21 years old; 672 minutes in the League) to perform, but also Damián Rodríguez (21; 551), Javi Rodríguez (21; 527), Carlos Domínguez (23; 344), Hugo Sotelo (20; 255), Sergio Carreira (24; 238) or even Alfon (25; 188) and Pablo Durán (23; 172).
The football proposal has also helped Iago Aspas, the emblem-myth of the entity with 208 goals in 502 games, to rediscover himself at 37 years old after the stage with Benítez, in which he was seen very uncomfortable on the pitch . The ecosystem outlined by Giráldez favors him – eight goals and six assists in 19 games – because he receives many balls between the lines in high areas, always with a forward in front who fixes the center backs and who is now usually Borja Iglesias (four goals) , another footballer from the celestial nursery who returned home this summer after his spells at Zaragoza, Espanyol, Betis and Bayer Leverkusen. Óscar Mingueza, one of the team’s regular wingers, is another of the players enhanced by the coach’s idea. The Catalan defender from Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, with a lot of freedom in attack and fantastic technical conditions, has scored two goals and four assists this season – an action of goal value every 98 minutes – and has been summoned by Luis de la Fuente for both latest calls for the Spanish team.
The new proposal, to date, has been a success. Giráldez and his coaching staff—when they were in the reserve team they already had several offers from Second Division clubs—last season they took the team in 17th position, on the brink of relegation, and left it in 13th, eight points above the positions it held. they would have evicted the second category of Spanish football. This season, after the first nine matchdays, Celta is ninth before hosting Real Madrid this Saturday in Balaídos (9:00 p.m., Dazn) without Aspas or Ilaix Moriba, both of whom were sent off the previous matchday against Las Palmas.
If the League had started the day that O Porriño’s coach debuted in Seville, Celta would be sixth with 30 points in 19 games, only behind Barcelona (48), Real Madrid (47), Atlético (38), Villarreal (35) and Girona (31). In this progression, the strength of the team in the stadium that the team led by Carlo Ancelotti visits on Saturday has played a main role. Balaídos has become a fortress since Giráldez arrived in March, with six wins, three draws and only one defeat against Atlético (0-1) at the end of September. It was a clash in which the Vigo team subdued Simeone’s team for many stretches and in which Oblak made several formidable saves so that a goal by Julián Alvarez in the 90th minute gave the rojiblancos three points.
Celta has once again hooked itself on a team that draws from the quarry – the vast majority of the coaching staff also trained as professionals at the base – to capture the coach’s football idea, which has so far led Celta to be fourth highest scoring team in the League, although also the fourth most suitable. An average of 22,111 fans have attended the first five games of the championship at Balaídos, almost 15% more than those who came to the stadium when Benítez sat on the bench. Subscribers have also grown slightly and more than 8,300 people have obtained the Celtista card – a new product that was launched in July and that provides a series of advantages for buying tickets or maintaining seniority as a member – after Giráldez and his team technician have dazzled the fans with their model and have reconnected them emotionally with a club that in recent seasons flirted with relegation for months and months in a desperate way for Celtismo.
