November will conclude with 14 days played in the 2023-2024 season The championship and two leaders. What is, perhaps, the most expected to be the greatest champion of Spanish football: Real Madrid. The other is in Catalonia, but it is not Barcelona, but the great revelation of all European football: Girona.
The club from the city of the same name adds 35 points after the home draw with Athletic Club and shares first place with Real Madrid, who have a seven-goal advantage on goal difference.
First place for Girona in La Liga is something historic and unimaginable for his work a few seasons ago when City Group acquired him in 2017, not to mention when it ended 2006 in fourth place in Spanish footballstrive for promotion with Sabadell, Vilanova, Barcelona C and several other Catalan clubs.
It is no longer a matter of five or six games, as with Girona’s 19 points from a possible 21 in the opening seven rounds, but rather Four full months of the season have passed. and exactly The only game the team lost was against Real Madrid.
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To the archives of La Liga we must return 31 years ago to encounter such a surprise, albeit with an even lower success rate in results: the Deportivo La Coruña it is from the era 1992-1993.
After 18 years between the second and third tiers of Spanish football and a 17th-placed finish in the 1991-92 season that forced them to avoid relegation in the play-offs against Betis, was born in Super Sports In the first months of the 1992-1993 season, in which, at the end of the 14th matchday, they shared the lead with Barcelona (who had postponed a game) with 21 points. with three points for a win like today (then it was 2) it would be 30.
That group caught everyone’s attention and They were not only champions of La Liga with four points (seven under the current system) of difference with Barca, finishing third. However, a city of 250 thousand inhabitants like La Coruña had set up something with very important signings for the club: the arrival of Yugoslavian international Miroslav Dzukicof Aldana from Real Madrid, Lopez Rekarte from Barcelona and, above all, from the Brazilian internationals Mauro Silva and babywhich in 1994 would be figures of world champion Brazil.
President Augusto César Lendoiro’s Depor would go on to win La Liga in 2000he would finish second four more times between 1994 and 2002, win the Copas del Rey in 1995 and 2002, win three Spanish Super Cups and even reach one Champions League semi-final in a decade-long process until it all fell into a financial crisis that took the Galician club to the Third Division, where it has been since 2020.
In Girona there are just over 100 thousand inhabitants and the support for the project is different, backed by investment from City Group and Marcelo Claurebut there is one key to sports management success that is done by Pere Guardiola – Pep’s brother and a minority shareholder of the club – and Manchester City key man Ferrán Soriano, with Quique Cárcel as sporting director and Michelle as a coach.
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Their budget is not among the top 10 in La Liga and they lost their top scorer in the market –Taty Castellanos-; to Rodrigo Riquelme, who just made his debut with the Spanish National Team Oriol Romeo, who went to Barcelona. TO Savinho, Artem Dovbyk, Daley Blind, Paulo Gazzaniga and Éric Garcíakey men of his season, he has incorporated them only now, with the only big investment the Ukrainian – the others arrived on loan or free.
This is what they do a surprise from the impact of this Deportivo La Coruña, with better results (83.3% of points against 71.4%), although today it seems much more difficult than then for a project like this to win La Liga over Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid (although the eight years before that season Sport The La Liga titles were shared among all of them. You meringues and Culés; now there are 19 between them and him Mattresses).
Other clubs who were far from favorites have led La Liga after matchday 14 since then: Mallorca, in the 1998-1999 season (28 points) Real Sociedad, in the 2002-2003 season (32 points) and Osasuna, in the 2005-2006 season (with 31 points, joint leader with Barcelona). Mallorca finished third in La Liga. Real Sociedad were runners-up just two points behind Real Madrid and Osasuna finished fourthenough for everyone manages to play Champions League in the following campaign.
To achieve this next season, Girona have one 10 point advantage over Athletic and Real Sociedad and 11 over Betis, quite long although there are still 24 days to go. A team that has never played in European competition could make its debut directly in the Champions League. All will serve to make you dream in Girona this Christmaswhen just two years ago they struggled to avoid going to the Third Division.
