Claudio Giraldes, the coach who reunited Celta Vigo | Football | Sport
When Celta beat Sevilla at the Sanchez Pizjuan (1-2) on March 17 in Claudio Giraldes’ debut on the heavenly bench, Iago Aspas, still pacing the pitch after playing 90 minutes, responded: ” That’s how we play! Even if we lose, at least let it be so, and that’s what we know how to do,” the captain was heard saying after club president Marian Mourinho had dared to refuse Rafa Benitez’s defensive proposal a few days earlier and preferred for Giraldes, a home coach who is only 36 years old – the youngest in the First Division, 37 days younger than Rayo’s Inigo Perez – who has already gained prestige in the world of football after leading the reserve team to playoffs promotion to second place with a dominant model and the main character with the ball.
Aspas’s anecdote of relief and satisfaction also symbolizes the feeling felt by the vast majority of fans. Seltin in that match. After months of poor results caused by Benitez’s stingy proposal based on defensive rigor (using a 4-4-2 formation in his own half for long stretches in many matches) and counter-attacks, fans saw the team hold out in the Andalusian capital for just two points from relegation without complexes and with the opposite model.
Giraldes, surrounded by much of the same young coaching staff that accompanied him at Celta B, opted for his usual 3-4-3 formation, giving a start to the young player Hugo Alvarez, called up these days, for the first time in the league. with the U21s – and the team seemed different: they controlled possession 65% of the time, spent most of the match on the Sevilla pitch and scored 18 times – compared to 11 for their opponents – adding the first victory of the Giraldes era, a coach with two university careers – sports science and journalism – which he spent as a player in the youth teams of Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid and that as a coach – on Wednesday he extended two more seasons until 2027 – he cut his teeth in the youth ranks of Celta Vigo. , with such famous victories that Celtismo remembered, such as the one they achieved with the reserve team in Riazor over eternal rivals Deportivo in October 2023.
Coach O Porrinho (Pontevedra, 20,562 inhabitants) took care of the young players whom he had already coached in the lower categories, unlike Rafa Benitez, with whom his streak of 675 games was broken last March – 15 years in which the streak was broken . Initially, a football player training in A-Madroa or in a new sports city was selected for the team. Giraldes pampered and squeezed out one of the club’s hallmarks, the youth team that gives Celta Vigo its roots in and around Vigo, unleashing and bringing in Hugo Alvarez himself (21; 672 league minutes). but also Damian Rodriguez (21; 551), Javi Rodriguez (21; 527), Carlos Dominguez (23; 344), Hugo Sotelo (20; 255), Sergio Carreira (24; 238) or even Alfon (25; 188) and Pablo Duran (23; 172).
The football proposal also helped Iago Aspas, the emblem-myth of the organization with 208 goals in 502 games, to reinvent himself at 37 years old after a phase with Benitez in which he was seen very uncomfortable on the field. The ecosystem described by Giraldes favors him – eight goals and six assists in 19 games – because he receives a lot of balls between the lines in high areas, always with a striker in front who anchors the center backs and who is now usually Borja Iglesias (four goals). ), another footballer from the heavenly nursery, who returned home this summer after stints in Zaragoza, Espanyol, Betis and Bayer Leverkusen. Oscar Mingueza, one of the team’s regular strikers, is another player who was inspired by the coach’s idea. With plenty of freedom in attack and fantastic technical ability, the Catalan defender from Santa Perpetua de Mogoda has scored two goals and provided four assists this season – an assist every 98 minutes – and has been called up by Luis de la Fuente. both recent call-ups to the Spanish national team.
The new proposal has been a success to date. Giraldes and his coaching staff – when they were in the reserves they already had several offers from second division clubs – last season they took the team to 17th position, on the brink of relegation, and left them in 13th, eight points behind higher positions. he would have evicted the second category of Spanish football. This season, after the first nine match days, Celta are ninth ahead of the match against Real Madrid this Saturday at Balaidos (21:00, Dazn) without Aspas and Ilaix Moriba, who were sent off on the previous match day against Las Palmas .
If the League had started on the day coach Porrinho made his debut in Seville, Celta would have been sixth with 30 points from 19 matches, behind only Barcelona (48), Real Madrid (47), Atlético Madrid (38). , Villarreal (35) and Girona. (31). The strength of the team at the stadium, which Carlo Ancelotti’s team visited on Saturday, has been decisive in this progress. Balaidos has been a fortress since Giraldes arrived in March, with six wins, three draws and just one defeat to Atlético Madrid (0-1) at the end of September. It was a clash in which Vigo’s team outplayed Simeone’s on many occasions and in which Oblak made some stunning saves so that Julián Alvarez’s 90th-minute goal gave the Rojiblancos three points.
Celta have once again joined a team that draws from the quarry (the vast majority of the coaching staff have also received professional training at the base) to bring to life the coach’s footballing vision, which has so far led Celta to the fourth highest scoring team in the League , although the fourth is the most suitable. The first five league games at the Balaidos were attended by an average of 22,111 fans, almost 15% more than those who came to the stadium when Benitez was on the bench. Subscriber numbers also grew slightly, with more than 8,300 people receiving a Celtista card – a new product that launched in July that offers a range of benefits when purchasing tickets or maintaining membership – after Giraldes and his team’s technician wowed fans with their model and reunited them emotionally with a club that had desperately flirted with relegation for Celtismo in recent seasons.