The Horny Zombies of Getafe

There are some nice images from this weekend’s action in Spain.  I particularly like the one of Alaves’ Takashi Inui  (‘Taka’ to his friends) being hugged at the end of the game by his ex-team-mates from Eibar, even though he’d just scored against them and celebrated the goal,  breaking the unspoken Spanish law which states: ‘Thou shalt not celebrate a goal against thy ex-team-mates unless thou hast not played for said team for some time and/or thou hast left in a cloud of pissed-offness’.  Inui, polite to a fault as the Japanese tend to be, begged for forgiveness after the game but decided not to commit suicide on his ceremonial sword – possibly because the result was 1-1 but also because his departure from Eibar to Betis at the end of last season was conducted in perfectly amicable circumstances. In fact Inui failed miserably at Betis, despite the fact that his style of play suited theirs, clearly one of the reasons  why Quique Setién fancied him, only to subsequently leave him rotting on the bench.

Whatever, the picture of Eibar’s goalie Dmitrovic embracing him in father-like fashion after the game is just what the country needed after a week of bitching, moaning and Ramos-Gate, all of which have been rather tiresome.  Eibar’s coach José Luis Mendilibar (‘Mendi’ to his mates) was told of Inui’s apology during the press conference.  Since Inui considers the Eibar coach to be his father and mentor, Mendilibar, for whom some sort of prize should be awarded for ‘old-fashioned bloke-who-still-sees-football-as-sport-not-business’, replied that Inui was  ‘un salao’ (a funny guy) and that instead of apologising he just shouldn’t score against them again.  Alavés, in 5^th spot, were in  fact attempting to stay on the coat tails of magic Getafe, now well consolidated in 4^th spot after beating in-form Huesca 2-1 at home.  Jaime Mata (his name means ‘James kills’) scored both goals and thus becomes the leading scorer amongst Spain-born players, with thirteen goals.  He overtook Espanyol’s Borja Iglesias to lead the Spanish pack of the ‘Pichichi’ list, but above him there are still five foreigners.

No matter – for Mata celebrating after his second goal was also one of the weekend’s key images, consolidating little Getafe in fourth place and making their pretensions to Champions league football next season ever more plausible.  This is quite remarkable, and would represent yet another significant inch in the column of Spain’s European exploits in general, extending the range of teams who have participated in both of the major competitions.  In the Premier League, Watford’s position is admirable, but the Champions League is a closed club for all but six teams.  Leicester were the exception that proved the rule, but Getafe’s rise this season has been remarkable, all the more for being unexpected.  Besides, Leicester has a population of some 350,000 folks and a top-flight tradition that far outshines that of Getafe (150,000), with its bleak little Coliseum stadium, shivering on a promontory to the south of Madrid, but exactly in the geographical centre of the Iberian Peninsula.

And to talk of Getafe as a ‘city’ is technically correct but in truth there is no real frontier between its municipal demarcation lines and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol 13 kms to the north.  Urban conurbations tend to blur the lines which football fans otherwise identify for the purposes of belonging, and whilst it would be unfair to deny Getafe its own character and people, it is nevertheless difficult for its representative team to persuade a swathe of its population not to support Atlético or Real Madrid.  Rayo Vallecano do seem to have achieved this, but maybe due to the special nature of Vallecas, with Leganés too having an independent feel to it, to some extent.   I’d need to live for a while in Madrid to understand it perfectly, but the figures speak for themselves. Getafe have 12,000 paid-up members, but their average attendance just broke the 10,000 mark last season.  It’s improved a little this season but you would think they’d be rushing to the doors and pounding upon them, given the success of the campaign so far.  I visited the ground in 2013 and wrote a piece for ESPN, which you can find here should you wish.

One reason for the non-rush may be simply that their style of play is still a little on the pragmatic side – some say cynical – but it’s also that Getafe is simply unglamorous.  It still seems slightly weird that both Bernd Schuster and Michal Laudrup have been coaches there. However, their belligerent President since 2002, the infamous  Angel Torres, is always good for a few soundbites.

At the beginning of the current season he claimed that there was a conspiracy at league headquarters to relegate Getafe because there were too many Madrid-based clubs in the top flight and it was hurting business – in the sense that there were too many games in the area on any given weekend.   Six months later and his charges are threatening to have the mellifluous chimes of the Champs League ringing around the working-class blocks of flats that surround their rather characterless stadium.  For a team that was still in the 7^th tier of Spanish football as recently as 1985, that is some going.

Torres, a self-made businessman with the shuttered sense of self-confidence that characterises rags-to-riches working men, has over the years courted controversy with considerable gusto.  Perhaps the club’s greatest moment came in 2011 when it produced an advertising campaign encouraging their supporters to breed more enthusiastically, and thus increase the club’s fanbase.  This imaginative campaign, possibly the first and last of its kind,  was accompanied by a short porn video entitled ‘The horny zombies of Getafe’ in which the fans were exhorted to donate their seed to Madrid’s sperm banks, all of whose locations were helpfully indicated by the naked zombies in the video.  The classy little film failed to make  the cut either for the Goyas or the Oscars, and as far as one can ascertain does not seem to have had any appreciable effect on Getafe’s annual birth-rate.

The club has been in Europe before, however, and famously reached the quarter-finals of the old UEFA Cup in 2008, when the mighty Bayern Munich visited the Coliseum and scraped a 3-3 draw, putting them through on away goals. They made the Europa League in 2010-11 too, but failed to progress beyond the group stage.  Maybe their time has come.  They’re certainly not going to be relegated, and since first gaining promotion in 2004 have only dropped back to the 2^nd Division for a single season, in 2017.  In James Killer they have unearthed an unlikely goalscorer – unlikely in the sense that despite his good record (he managed 41 from 71 with his last club Valladolid) he had never played in the top flight. Given that he’s 30 this year, that’s a slightly unusual story.  When Jorge Molina came on in the second half (36 years old) the veteran forward line proved too much for plucky Huesca, who had in fact opened the scoring and looked to be continuing their recent revival. All this without Angel Rodriguez, the guy whose goals last season projected Getafe into a decent 8^th place finish and who now finds himself on the bench.

Until Real Madrid unexpectedly beat Valladolid 1-4 on Sunday night (‘unexpectedly’ given the frenzied and fidgety week they’d had), Getafe were looking to be breathing down their necks for that 3^rd place spot.  It’s getting serious.  Down at the other end Celta dropped into the bottom three after losing at home to yo-yo Betis – and Villarreal finally justified Liga fever’s faith in them by winning 0-2 at Levante, culminating a decent week after their win in the Europa League in midweek at Zenit – not an easy game by any means.

Next week, Betis and Barça looks an attractive one, as does Athletic and Atlético. Our new friends Getafe visit Valencia, which might be a tough one for them but will certainly prove their bona fides if they emerge unscathed.  Meanwhile, if you meet any naked zombies stumbling around your neighbourhood, just humour them.