{"id":10733,"date":"2025-01-28T19:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T19:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10733"},"modified":"2025-01-30T12:32:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T12:32:34","slug":"a-point-to-be-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10733","title":{"rendered":"A Point To Be Made"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

And so to the Estadi Montilivi for our final game in the league phase of the newly-formatted UEFA Champions League.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The glaring red but compact Catalonian home of Girona FC nestles beside the rather non-descript concrete modernism of the Montilivi campus of the city’s public university, some 3 kilometres south of the city’s colourful old quarter. The stadium seats barely 14,000 and is restricted to 10,000 for UEFA games, so there will be only 500 travelling faithful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of elite sport, Girona has, until recently, been recognised more for professional cycling than football. The club is five years away from its centenary, yet you can count its seasons in La Liga on one hand. Its UEFA club coefficient ranks ninth among Spanish clubs and 97th overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Girona FC was founded on the 42nd birthday of Raymond Chandler, July 23, 1930. It rose from the financial wreckage of Uni\u00f3 Deportiva Girona, which had collapsed the year before under the weight of its debt. UD Girona had been heir to one of the city’s first football clubs, FC Giron\u00ed, later Strong Esport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting in the second tier of the Catalan Championship with two-thirds of its team drawn from what had been UD Girona’s youth side, the new club made it to the second division of the national Spanish league by the 1935-36 season. They qualified for the playoffs in their first season but missed out on promotion to La Liga.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a high water mark. The Spanish Civil War and World War II caused the waters to recede rapidly and far. By 1959, the club was in Spanish football’s third tier. In 1970, it left its original home, Vista Alegre, for the newly built Estadi Montilivi, 2 kilometres to the south. For years, the new stadium hosted third and fourth-tier football and, for three nadiral seasons, regional league football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was not until 2008-09, after back-to-back promotions, that the club returned to the Segunda Division, 49 years after being relegated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New ownership came in 2010, when three local businessmen, led by Ramon Vilar\u00f3, a bar owner turned arcade gaming machine entrepreneur, bought the club. After several near misses, Girona finally won the jackpot, getting promoted to La Liga for the 2017-18 season. It had taken it 87 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right at the start of Girona’s first La Liga season, the club announced that Abu Dhabi’s City Football Group (CFG) \u2014 yes, that C115y football group \u2014  and the Girona Football Group, led by Pep Guardiola’s brother, Pere, had bought matching 44% stakes. Guardiola sold much of his in 2020 to the Bolivian-American businessman Marcelo Claure, who owns Club Bol\u00edvar in his homeland and 10% of CFG’s New York City FC in his other homeland. Girona’s ownership is now CFG 47%, Claure 35% and Girona Football Group 16%. Pere Guardiola remains chairman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Girona lasted only two seasons in the top flight, not returning until two seasons ago when it finished 10th. To the surprise of many, it came third last season, doing the double over Barcelona and qualifying for the CL. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CL football has perhaps come too soon. Girona has lost six of their seven matches, although five by the odd goal, including the games against PSG, Liverpool and AC Milan. Yet, despite an xG of 5.9, they have not scored since Match Week 3 and cannot make even the playoff round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manager M\u00edchel S\u00e1nchez spent most of his playing career with Rayo Vallecano, where he got his coaching start before moving to Huesca. He has been in charge of Girona since July 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His starting 4-2-3-1 morphs into a diamond or box midfield, with the wingers playing high and wide when Girona is building with the ball. Once the press is broken, the team shifts to 3-1-5-1 with one of the full-backs, usually the left-back, inverting and playing high. Thus, most of the play goes through the middle, with the wingers cutting in to attack the half-spaces and lots of rotations in the automatisms. The backline plays high, and the team is happy to recycle the ball patiently to maintain possession. Without the ball, Girona drops into a 4-4-2 low-block.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that sounds familiar, it is. We see it week in and week out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will also likely be a few familiar faces on parade for the Blanquivermells (that\u2019s your actual Catalan for red and whites).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paulo Gassaniga, who won a cap for Argentina in 2018, is the preferred glove-butler. He has been on the books of Gillingham, Southampton, the neighbours and Fulham, from whom he joined Girona on a free in the summer of 2023. He hurt his back in Girona’s weekend defeat to Rayo Vallecana, with Pau L\u00f3pez, who spent 2016-17 with the Marshdwellers’ U-21s, coming on for his league debut. Gassaniga is 50\/50 to play against us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chechia international Ladislav Krej\u010d\u00ed arrived from Sparta Prague last summer. He has been an ever-present at left centre-back but will likely miss this game with a hip injury. M\u00edchel will have to choose two centre-backs from three 30-somethings: Daley Blind, who has more than 100 caps for the senior Dutch side and four years at the Old Toilet on his resume but is also an injury doubt; David Lopez, who came up through the ‘other’ Barcelona club, Espanyol; and Juanpe, who has played most of his football in the second tier with Girona and Racing Santander. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flanking them will likely be Spain U-21 international Arnau Mart\u00ednez on the right and former Spain U-21 Miguel Guti\u00e9rrez, reportedly an Amorin target, on the left. The latter, however, is also an injury doubt. Yet another former Spain U-21 international, Alejandro Franc\u00e9s, who is 22 and can play across the back four, could come in if Martinez is out, although Blind also plays left-back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Venezuelan international Yangel Herrera, now at his third CFG club, will likely be one of the double pivots if fit; he has a well-used collection of sick notes. Oriol Romeu, another of Girona’s thirty-somethings, is expected to be the other. Romeu came through Barcelona’s youth ranks and was sold to Chelsea in 2011, where he hardly played. He was offloaded to Southampton, where he made over 200 Premier League appearances. Girona now has him on loan from Barcelona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M\u00edchel has numerous options for the central and attacking midfield roles, including another Dutch international and Manchester United castoff, Donny van de Beek, and Spaniard Iv\u00e1n Mart\u00edn. Either could drop back if Herrera is unavailable. For the wings, there’s Y\u00e1ser Asprilla, a 21-year-old with eight Colombian caps who enjoyed, if that is the word, a couple of seasons at Watford in the Championship; Viktor Tsygankov, a seasoned Ukrainian international, the veteran Portu, now on his second spell at the club; and the Nigerian born former Dutch international Arnaut Danjuma, who has done time with Bournemouth, the neighbours and Everton, accumulating 37 PL appearances. Bryan Gil, the 23-year-old Spanish international on loan from the neighbours, is suspended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up front, Michel has struggled to settle on a replacement for Artem Dovbyk, sold to Roma for \u20ac30 million in the summer. Cristhian Stuani, the club’s captain and record goalscorer, is its leading goalscorer in La Liga this season. However, he has only four, all as a substitute, and the former Uruguay international, who had a couple of seasons with Middlesborough almost a decade ago, one in the PL, is 38.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abel Ruiz, 14 years Stuani’s junior, has three. Another Barca youth product, Ruiz has a couple of caps for Spain, but the last one came in 2021. He is one ahead in the goalscoring stakes of Bojan Miovski, bought from Aberdeen in the summer, the canny Caledonians selling the North Macedonian for ten times the \u20ac650,000 they paid for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arsenal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With one foot in the knockout round, I expect Arteta to rotate but have the heavy brigade on the bench. A point guarantees progress, but Arteta will want to win because he always does, and the higher we finish in the table, the more advantageous our starting point in the brackets for the knockout rounds should be. Thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya
Timber, Saliba, Kiwior, Calafiori
Jorghino, Merino, Nwaneri
Sterling, Trossard, Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Girona will attack and create chances but be vulnerable defensively. Forty goals scored and 44 conceded in 30 games in all competitions tell their own story. Similar styles will cancel each other out to an extent, but we should manage to blank the Blanquivermells for a routine 2-0 win. However, Girona will want to sign off their first CL campaign in style in front of their fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Oliver will be on the whistle in Catalonia this week, but, thankfully, down the road in Barcelona. “Es tracta de tu’ is the catch of song that Barca and Atalanta fans will need. The Italian Maurizio Mariani has our game. I hope that is the last time you need to know his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoy the game, ‘holics, near and far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And so to the Estadi Montilivi for our final game in the league phase of the newly-formatted UEFA Champions League. The glaring red but compact Catalonian home of Girona FC nestles beside the rather non-descript concrete modernism of the Montilivi campus of the city’s public university, some 3 kilometres south of the city’s colourful old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10733"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10746,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10733\/revisions\/10746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}