Celta Vigo give Real Madrid a bloody lip in their survival battle

First Joseph Aidoo took Zinedine Zidane down, then Denis Suárez and Santi Mina did the same to his defence. The first hit was harder but the second hurt more. There were 30 minutes left at the Bernabéu when everyone saw the Ghanaian tumble off the pitch and crash into the Real Madrid manager, knocking him to the floor and giving him a bloody lip; there were four minutes left when the Galician saw something none of them had, except the man born in the same province a month earlier. And before anyone knew it, so swift and smooth, via some hidden portal, the ball was in the net. Neither of them had started the game, but Suárez and Mina had ended it: 1-0 up, 2-1 down, it was now 2-2 and it was done.

High in the north-eastern corner, way, way above the pitch, 700 Celta de Vigo fans went wild. “They’ve been with us since we woke from our siesta,” said Iago Aspas. They had followed the team from the hotel to the ground. It was almost 11pm now, and they weren’t going anywhere. The players headed to the dressing room and then back out again, leaping about in front of them, singing. It was a wonder some of them could still stand; at the full-time whistle, there had been bodies lying everywhere, exhausted. It was only a draw, sure, but here, where they hadn’t won in 13 years, this was big. “One small point, one giant leap,” El Faro de Vigo called it. Enough to take them out of the relegation zone, believing they could actually survive.

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One pass did it. Well, two. And if the first was brilliant, Aspas slipping the ball through the gap for Fedor Smolov to open the scoring after seven minutes, the second was barely believable. Not least because this time there was no gap to slip it through. “Phenomenal,” Zidane called it, hand still gently rubbing a bruised lip. “Magnificent”, said Emilio Butragueño. And they’re the men it hurt. Not so much a pass as the pass, impossible to see before it happened and almost as hard to work out after.

There were 10 men between Suárez and goal, all bar Thibaut Courtois within a 10-yard strip, when he sent Sergio Ramos – the furthest forward – bumbling off in the other direction, turned and, with the outside of his foot, somehow flicked a way through Ramos, Dani Carvajal, Raphaël Varane, Marcelo, Fede Valverde, Casemiro, Ferland Mendy, Luka Modric and Vinicius Junior for Mina.

“They have a lot of quality, they showed that on the goal,” Courtois said, and that was part of the point: the pass (passes) was (were) a glimpse of what they have. “They’re better than their league position suggests,” Zidane said, which they really should be. This is a team with Rafinha – astonishing here, delighting his brother – Fran Beltrán, Brais Méndez, Mina, Pione Sisto, Suárez, Gabriel Fernández, and Aspas. One whose salary cap stands at €68.3m, almost twice the size of Mallorca, Valladolid and Granada, and ahead of 10 teams. It’s also a team with identity, commitment and shared ideals. That, at least, is the theory.

Club captain Hugo Mallo is the guy who went to a Galician derby on the bus with a supporters’ club, standing in the away end wearing a hood and dark glasses and gesturing to Depor fans to come and have a go if they think they’re hard enough. The team captain, Aspas, is a Celta fan, youth teamer, quite probably their best player ever and the guy whose mum wades into the rías for shellfish and goes to virtually every game on the bus with a supporters’ club. Nor is it just them: 11 players were in the club’s youth system, 10 are from the province of Pontevedra. Their summer repatriation policy was consciously pursued, bringing back Suárez, Mina, Rafinha and Pape Cheikh.

In short, they notbe in trouble. All the more considering they were forewarned. After an abysmal run last season, Aspas returned to embark on a one-man salvation mission and when at last they got safe at the end he declared: this can’t happen again. Those signings were supposed to ensure it didn’t, but it did. Coach Fran Escribá was sacked in November with the team in the relegation zone and, internally, the unity that a Galician core was supposed to give them just didn’t happen. Quite the opposite, in fact.

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Óscar García took over, winning at Villarreal in his second game and there were signs of improvement, an approach more in keeping with the quality of players: closer, shorter, more technical. Slowly, he was recovering them, re-establishing and redefining relationships, challenging power bases. “A lot of our work has been psychological,” he says. Yet the reality was troubling, a battle, and results did not immediately follow. While they drew five of their next eight, although they lost just once since the turn of the year (1-0 at Valencia), they didn’t win any. Until this weekend, Mina had scored just twice and only Aspas had more. Gabriel Fernandez, signed to replace Maxi Gómez, had only started five games and scored just one. Smolov, signed in the winter window, had to replace him. “He’s here to help us out,” Aspas said.

He has, too. So has Sisto, absent before. When Sisto was taken off against Eibar, he departed in a huff, Óscar confronting him. “He should remember where he was before I came,” the manager said, promising punishment. In 12 weeks with Escribá, Sisto had played 71 minutes; under García, he only missed one game, becoming a regular starter. The man who once went 21 days eating nothing but fruit without telling the club, convinced it would help him only to discover it didn’t, Oscar thought he could help. “Pione is different, as a person as well as a player,” the manager said and he was worth the effort. Last week, Sisto scored the 91st-minute winner against Sevilla, giving them a first victory in eight, their first at home since October. This week, he came on as a late sub with Mina and Suárez, as Celta went for it.

Mina and Suarez were supposed to lead this project; at least they led them to this late point, a glimpse of the quality that was always there. “They were playing less but they’re training well and I’m glad they could help us,” Oscar said. They needed that on a weekend when all the teams at the bottom, sides already showing signs of a reaction, picked up at least a point: Espanyol drew 2-2 at Sevilla, Leganés were held 0-0 at home by Betis and even Mallorca, who sacked their CEO this week, beat Alavés. It lifted them back out of the relegation zone on goal difference; more importantly, it lifted them emotionally, celebrated like a revival, an antidote to that fatalism. “It hurt,” Zidane said; for Celta, it healed. Belief to go with their quality. “Football owed us one,” Aspas said.

It’s tight down there: Espanyol and Leganés have 19 points, Mallorca and Celta 21. Eibar, who have a game in hand, have 24 and Valladolid 26. “We look at the table, of course we do,” Oscar said, “but we have to look at ourselves more. If we want to survive, we have to believe we can. This point is about character, never giving up. If you’re not strong, you don’t get out of there.”

Talking points

• Atlético Madrid got a 2-2 draw at Mestalla in a match El País described as an “electric storm”, a lot more fun than their games have been of late. And now it’s time for Liverpool, whose astonishing stats, Saúl says, are there to be “broken”. On Sunday, Atlético trained at Cerro del Espino, with Diego Costa back for the head table tennis and for the Champions League too. Over the other side of the pitch, meanwhile, Kieran Trippier continued his recovery too. There are hopes he’ll be ready for Anfield. Meawhile, above them on the min pitch, another English defender, Charlie I’Anson, was busy scoring a superb header to claim a late equaliser for Rayo Majadahonda. It sounded good from outside anyway, and it turned out it was.

• Lionel Messi has a problem, but more solutions. This is no his longest run without a goal in six years, 32 shots rattled off without hitting the net, but what he doesn’t take he does give. His assist for the opener in what ended up being a tense, nervous afternoon against Getafe was his sixth in a row. Griezmann scored that, Sergi Roberto got the second.

• Get a load of this week’s best goal, scored by Doctor Diego Cervero, who got a hat-trick aged 36 for Barakaldo against Xabi Alonso’s Real Sociedad B in Segunda B. Boom.

Real Madrid 2-1 Celta Vigo, Athletic Bilbao 0-1 Osasuna, Leganes 0-0 Real Betis, Sevilla 2-2 Espanyol, Granada 2-1 Valladolid, Villarreal 2-1 Levante, Barcelona 2-1 Getafe, Mallorca 1-0 Alavés, Valencia 2-2 Atlético