Full article by Sid Lowe: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/may/14/vallecas-yellow-submarine
It is only six years since Villarreal
were a penalty away from a European Cup final and at the start of this
season they were a Champions League team. Bayern Munich and Manchester
City visited the Madrigal this season; next season Huesca and Sabadell
will. In the 89th minute, Villarreal were safe. Really safe. It would
take two goals in two different stadiums for them to go down. A draw
would be enough; a defeat would be enough, so long as Rayo didn't score.
There was no way both things would happen. After all, Villarreal's
opponents, Atlético Madrid, knew that Málaga were winning – that small
hope of a Champions League place had gone and taken the motivation with
it. But then it happened. Ramadel Falcao scored in the 89th minute. The
president, Fernando Roig, silently stood up and left the directors' box,
heading down the stairs. He could take no more but his team were still
safe; by the time he reached the bottom they were not.
His team
had conceded twice in barely two minutes: the one they conceded to
Atlético on the east coast and the one Granada conceded to Rayo to the
east of Madrid. Villarreal were down; so, immediately, were
Villarreal B. Two teams relegated for the price of one. As Roig stood on
the pitch, the architect of Villarreal's most successful spell ever,
the fans stood sadly to applaud. Outside, a handful of supporters
gathered to insult the players, "mercenaries not fit to wear the shirt".
Down in the tunnel, José Manuel Llaneza, the sporting director, was
confronting Diego Godín, the Atlético player who was kicked out of
Villarreal for hitting the town the night before a game.
"It's
hard to explain," said the coach Miguel-Angel Lotina, but he was about
to have a go. Dark thoughts troubled him. "Football has been cruel to
Villarreal. What has happened in the last three or four years in the
First Division is worrying. One day, I imagine it will all come out, but
football is in grave danger." At the final whistle, the midfielder
Angel had talked about "strange things … that everyone knows but no one
can denounce". The maletín
again. There was, though, a different discourse from Marcos Senna; in
glasses, a soft voice and a quiet, firm dignity, politely but
persistently refusing to be dragged into a controversy, he insisted it
was nobody's fault but theirs. "We failed," he said, "and that's it. We
only had to rely on ourselves. A draw was enough and we didn't get it.
There is no excuse."
Villarreal have been through three coaches
this season; as many as they had in the previous seven seasons.
Financial reality has bitten and that perfect ecosystem has collapsed.
Their first coach was sacked largely because his relationship with the
players was so edgy, the second arrived because he was cheap and left because he wasn't very good, and the third has now been relegated in two successive seasons, having gone down with Depor last year
. The planning has been poor; when Villarreal sold Santi Cazorla, Senna
said that he felt like they had cut a finger off. Nine months later,
Cazorla has reached the Champions League with Málaga; Villarreal are
down. Villarreal made €19m on Cazorla; they spent €17m of that on
Cristián Zapata, Jonathan de Guzmán and Javier Camuñas. None have
performed. Giuseppe Rossi has had two knee ligament injuries and missed
virtually the whole season, Nilmar has missed some games and disappeared
from others.
In the final weeks, Villarreal passed up chance
after chance to clinch survival, paying for over-caution, inviting
trouble. Waiting for the whistle was waiting to be hit. Bad luck only
goes so far in explaining failure. Falcao scored in the 89th minute,
costing them a draw that would have kept them safe. Last week, Jonas
scored in the 92nd minute costing them a draw that would have kept them
safe and provoking a confrontation because Valencia, those dirty cheats,
had tried to win when they had nothing to play for – a confrontation
that speaks volumes about what's wrong with Spanish football. Two weeks
before that, a Raúl García equaliser in the 72nd minute cost them a
victory, the week before that Carlos Vela scored an 87th‑minute
equaliser for Real Sociedad and the week before that Lautaro Acosta's
93rd‑minute equaliser cost them against Racing Santander. In March they
lost to Getafe, Levante and Zaragoza: in all three games they conceded
late on – in the 72nd, 92nd and 85th and 93rd minutes respectively.
Those
should not have happened; this definitely should not. This was more of
the same, only worse. On Sunday night, a late goal in Vila-Real and an
even later goal in Vallecas kept Rayo up and sent Villarreal down. As
the Rayo players celebrated, the chant went up: "El Rayo es de primera."
Rayo are a first‑division team. Twelve years later, Villarreal are not.
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