In the northeastern tip of Spain lays a small city named Girona, an hour from the French border. It is known for its medieval walls and historic Jewish quarter, so quaint that Game of Thrones even filmed there.
The population is just a touch over 100,000, dwarfed by their Catalan neighbours Barcelona an hour down the road. For decades, too, its football team – Girona FC – has been in the long shadow of European giants Barcelona FC.
No longer. From playing in the fifth tier of Spanish football just 24 years ago, Girona has experienced a meteoric rise. Now the virtual unknowns sit second on the ladder in Spain’s top flight, only behind Real Madrid on goal difference – despite Real Madrid’s squad costing 14 times more in transfer fees.
In December, they beat Barcelona for the first time ever – at the famed Camp Nou – to announce their arrival as a legitimate contender in the title race.
And now they sit well clear of Barca and Atletico Madrid, who they beat 4-3 in a thrilling victory last week.
Stream Over 50 Sports Live & On-Demand with Kayo. New to Kayo? Start Your Free Trial Today >
After Leicester City stunned the Premier League by winning the title in 2016 on a shoestring budget, Girona are living their own fairytale.
The team is a cobbled-together squad of rejects, former Premier League players and loanees, assembled under the masterful leadership of the brother of Manchester City’s legendary coach Pep Guardiola, and financially backed by Man City’s Abu Dhabi owners, the City Football Group.
Here’s the remarkable story of the Blanquivermells – the white and reds – rose to the vertiginous heights of battling for the top of La Liga.
THE HISTORY – AND THE LONG YEARS OF PAIN
Looking at the 93-year-history of Girona FC, you won’t find major titles or European trophies. They’ve never won the Spanish league or a national cup – far from it. From 1959 to 2008, the team never competed in so much as Spain’s second division. The club was mired in financial struggles for much of the latter decades of the century. And in Girona itself, the team was mostly an afterthought.
“Girona citizens were mainly Barcelona, Real Madrid or even Espanyol fans,” Girona president Delfi Geli told The Athletic recently. “This was our reality and the closest we could get to the elite. The city once had a basketball team in the national top flight, but football … you had to look elsewhere.”
The team’s stadium, Estadi Montilivi, is the smallest in Spain’s top flight, holding around 14,000 fans. But go back to 1999 and the stadium would usually play host to just 200 supporters as the team competed in the fifth level of Spanish football, almost exclusively playing other Catalonian teams.
When it comes to Girona, the town has long been renowned for its restaurants including El Celler de Can Roca, one of the world’s finest establishments and boasting three Michelin stars. Football has always been something of an afterthought.
MORE COVERAGE
Matildas’ Olympics hopes take major hit as Kerr suffers ‘devastating’ injury blow
FA Cup Wrap: Star’s ‘breathtaking’ strike stuns as Reds twist knife in Arsenal nightmare
Spurs bombshell as Ange signs $86m ex-Chelsea flop in shock deal
But things began to change in 2006-07 and the following season, when they earned back-to-back promotions to return to the second division for the first time in 49 years. An ownership takeover was completed in 2010, which founded a reserve team and improved training facilities. Suddenly the team’s financial woes were behind them, though they were still operating on a shoestring budget.
The side stabilised in the second tier and soon pushed towards promotion – missing out in the play-offs in 2014-15 and the following season. At the third time of asking, they made it in 2016-17 by finishing second in the Segunda Division.
For the first time in the club’s 87-year history, they were in La Liga.
THE LEGEND’S BROTHER BEHIND THE RISE
It was after their first push for promotion in 2014-15 that a key figure arrived who would revolutionise the club – slowly but surely, step by painful step turning them into a side capable of not just competing in the top flight, but potentially even winning it.
Guardiola. Not Pep, the coach of Manchester City who broke records at Bayern Munich and Barcelona before taking England by storm. No, Pere – Pep’s brother, his junior by five years.
After retiring from playing, Pere had played a key role in developing Nike’s football footprint – including managing the deals with Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, before working in marketing with Barcelona and the Spanish and Portuguese national teams.
In 2009 he co-founded his own agency and became one of the most influential agents in global football. His clients included his brother – of course – as well as superstars like Andres Iniesta and Luis Suarez.
In 2015, when a French company bought out Girona, Pere was brought in as an influential adviser and deal-maker. Under his leadership and canny negotiating skills, Girona were emboldened in the transfer market and developed into a more professional club from top to bottom.
THE TAKEOVER THAT TURNED THINGS AROUND – AND RAISED EYEBROWS
And two years later, just after Girona were promoted to the top flight, Pere Guardiola bought a 44.3% stake in the club – while Manchester City’s owners, the City Football Group, bought an equal stake. The total cost of the 88.6 per cent sale was reportedly just 7 million euros ($A11.4m), effectively pocket change in City’s budget.
It wasn’t the first franchise bought by the City Football Group (largely owned by billionaire Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi) – but it was the first in Europe.
It was a significant moment in the growing trend of mega-money ownership groups taking charge of multiple clubs.
According to a SportBusiness and CIES Sports Intelligence report, as of November 2023, there are now 124 entities worldwide which own two or more clubs, with a staggering 301 clubs part of multi-club operations.
One key problem is that multiple clubs with the same owners could face off in the Champions League, for example.
“There is more and more interest for this multi-club ownership and we shouldn’t just say no [to] the investments, and for multi-club ownership,” UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said in March. “But we have to see what kind of rules we set in that case, because the rules have to be strict.”
In 2017, UEFA launched a landmark investigation into Red Bull Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg, who have close ties through their Red Bull owners.
But UEFA found the clubs had enough operational independence, and both were allowed to compete in the 2017/18 Champions League. The next year, they were even paired in the same group in the Europa League.
However, because City Football Group (CFG) are not the majority owners of Girona (they currently own 47 per cent), UEFA’s multi-ownership rules do not apply – and Girona last year were granted UEFA approval to compete in continental competitions should they qualify.
Reds too good for Gunners in the FA Cup | 00:54
Nevertheless, Girona have clearly benefited from close ties to Man City and the wider City network.
CFG’s chief executive, Ferran Soriano, is from Catalan – and was previously vice-president of Barcelona FC. Their director of football, Aitor ‘Txiki’ Begiristain, learned Catalan while playing for Barcelona alongside Pep Guardiola and under the coaching of the legendary Johann Cruyff. It was his decision, as Barcelona’s director of football, to hand Guardiola the coaching reins of the senior side instead of Jose Mourinho. At that time, Guardiola had coached Barcelona’s reserve team for a season.
“He trusted me when I wasn’t anyone in football management. He could have chosen many managers at that time. My gratitude is eternal,” Guardiola once said.
The pair – and Sorriano – turned Barcelona into one of the greatest teams in club football history – and they have done the same at Man City.
After taking over at City, Guardiola emphasised just how important Begiristain is, saying: “If Txiki worked for Chelsea, I would probably have called Chelsea.”
The trio’s strong Catalan links – never mind the brotherly connection between Pep and Pere Guardiola – made buying Girona far more than just a smart business decision. It was personal.
HOW MAN CITY STRENGTHENED THE GIRONA CHARGE
There’s no doubt that the City connections have been a key factor in developing Girona into surprise Champions League contenders.
After Pere Guardiola took a role at the club in 2015, he immediately began to secure loan deals for fringe City players or talented youngsters in need of match minutes to develop into world-class stars – something that has remained a major source of Girona players down the years.
In 2015/16, four players were loaned from Man City to Girona. In 16/17, it was three and in 17/18 it was a whopping five. The next season it was three, in 2020/21 it was four, then three last season – including one from another CFG-owned club, New York City.
For Manchester City, the loan connection with Girona provides a place to develop young players or signings that are not quite at the first-team level with the Premier League club.
But many CFG players will never reach the ultimate goal of playing for Man City’s first team – and that’s where Girona looms as an opportunity for CFG to send players to boost their transfer value.
“We haven’t seen too many instances of players coming from CFG-owned clubs into Manchester City,” Shiv Jhangiani, head of Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions at sports consultants Sportsology, told ESPN last year. “But they have been able to generate returns from players that have come into their clubs and moved on externally to other clubs in the market and made a pretty significant return.
“Player trading has become a very robust revenue stream for clubs that are able to operate it well.”
Many teams, Chelsea most notably, have been accused of stockpiling vast numbers of players and sending them out on multiple loans to increase their transfer value before selling them for a profit – effectively treating them as a commodity.
It is something that FIFA and UEFA have cracked down on in recent months, limiting squad sizes as well as the number of players that can be loaned out by a club.
But over the years, signing multiple players on loan from Man City has provided a valuable mechanism for Girona to strengthen their squad without spending money on transfer fees.
That includes Catalan native Pablo Maffeo, who was loaned there from City for three seasons in a row – and was later named by Lionel Messi as the toughest man-marker he had played against. VfB Stuttgart splashed out a then-club-record fee for him – and then loaned him back to Girona (for a FOURTH time) one season later.
It includes the likes of Douglas Luiz, who could not receive a work permit when signed by Man City in 2017 for £10m. He was loaned to the Spanish side for two seasons in a row, before being sold for £15m to Aston Villa in 2019. He has since played 179 times for Villa.
The network of CFG clubs – and the system of loaning Man City players to other clubs to develop them – has raised plenty of eyebrows.
Are Girona being controlled by Manchester City, merely being used for the benefit of City’s squad-building and profiteering? Or do they boast unfair advantages through their links to CFG?
The answer, according to those at Girona, is a definite no. They have their own independent scouting and football departments, and while they have connections with City Football Group leaders like CEO Ferran Soriano and director of football Txiki Begiristain, they are not dictated to by them.
Instead, Girona believe they are simply being smart in nabbing some of the best young players from Manchester City on loan – and they have also made an impressive habit of signing City rejects on permanent deals.
The perfect example of that is Aleix Garcia, an extremely talented Villareal youngster who was signed by City in 2015. But after two years at City saw him make just nine appearances, he was loaned to Girona in 2017-18 and again the following season.
He would eventually return to Girona – then in the second tier – on a permanent deal in 2021.
Another is Yangel Herrera, who was signed in the off-season by Girona after he spent last season on loan there from Manchester City.
HOW THEY FELL OUT OF LA LIGA – AND CAME BACK STRONGER
Girona’s first year in the Spanish top flight was utterly remarkable. They beat reigning Champions League winners Real Madrid in October and finished a lofty 10th, defying all expectations of a relegation battle.
But the next season, in 2018/19, they finished 18th and were relegated right back to the second tier. There were real improvements, however, like the academy being redeveloped, and the pitch at Montilivi re-laid – though the stadium itself remains tiny!
All that remained was the right coach to take them back into La Liga – and they found him in 2021.
Michel Sanchez had been sacked by Huesca in January of that year, with the team bottom of La Liga – largely due to Michel’s refusal to waver from his all-out-attacking principles.
In many ways, he was the perfect coach for Girona and for CFG, given they want all clubs in their network to play an attacking and attractive brand of football.
And while he was born in Madrid – and was a Rayo Vallecano legend as a player – he began Catalan lessons straight away.
It took just one season for Michel to lead the team back to the top flight. And last year, they finished 10th in the first division – having scored 58 goals (fifth most in the league) but conceded 55 (also fifth). Simply put, you were guaranteed goals when watching a Girona game.
Finishing 10th was impressive for a newly-promoted team. But this year, they took things to a whole new level despite losing a host of their star players in the off-season.
THE PERE GUARDIOLA TRANSFER MASTERCLASS
They lost midfield star Oriel Romeu (formerly of Chelsea and Southampton) to Barcelona. Then they lost centre-back Santiago Bueno to Premier League side Wolves for €12m, their best winger Rodrigo Riquelme, and topscorer Taty Castellanos.
Girona had been gutted. But then Pere Guardiola masterminded an incredible transfer window to reshape and strengthen the team yet again.
They turned a loan deal for 32-year-old goalkeeper Paulo Gazzaniga (from England second-tier team Fulham) into a permanent deal for free.
In another free deal, they landed 33-year-old centre-back Daley Blind from Bayern Munich.
Both Gazzaniga (Southampton and Tottenham) and Blind (Manchester United) were former Premier League players.
It wasn’t the only veteran they picked up for a bargain, bringing back 31-year-old winger Portu for just €1.5m – a player they sold in 2019 for €10m.
As always, Girona raided CFG clubs for young talents – turning a loan deal for Man City reject Yangel Herrera into a permanent move, and poaching 19-year-old Brazilian winger Savio on loan from Troyes in France (another CFG club). They also landed Barcelona’s 22-year-old centre-back Eric Garcia on loan.
Then they smashed their transfer record for Ukrainian international striker Artem Dovbyk for a reported €7m.
All up, the team spent just €4.35m more than they earned in sales (ten teams in La Liga had a bigger net spend).
Yet they had built a squad of veterans and youngsters, loanees and rejects. In total, Girona has spent just €33.75m in transfer fees on the entire squad – the sixth-cheapest squad in the league.
Compare that to Real Madrid, who spent €573m on their squad, while Barcelona spent €371.4m and Atletico Madrid €361.1m (all figures per Transfermarkt).
The massive gap between the Spanish giants and Girona in spending is also reflected in their salary caps for wages, coaches and reserve and youth teams.
Real Madrid’s expenditure limit this season is €727.5m, Atletico Madrid €296.4m, Barcelona €270m, while Girona is limited to just €52m, the eight-lowest in the league.
When it comes to spending, Girona might have backing from the City Football Group, but they are operating on a fraction of the budgets of their rivals – and well and truly punching above their weight.
THE SEASON
The season began with a comeback 1-1 draw with Real Sociedad, who were also competing in the Champions League after finishing fourth in the league last year. There were plenty of promising signs, including Dovbyk scoring on his league debut.
The minnows would win their next six games on the trot, roaring into first place on the ladder for the first time in their 93-year history.
“We know this isn’t normal,” said Girona player Aleix García.
The streak included a 3-0, a 4-2 and a 5-3, with goals flowing from all over the park.
That has been a hallmark of Michel’s coaching – a flexible and freewheeling attack that relies on pace and rapid passing. The wingers and fullbacks are constantly on the move and regularly confuse defences by changing which channels they use down the flanks – if a winger cuts inside, the fullback overlaps; if the winger hits the sideline, the fullbacks run through the middle.
Even when they lost to Real Madrid in September – still their only loss of the season after 19 games – they went toe-to-toe with the giants, never backing down despite being outclassed.
They finished with more possession and 13 shots to Los Blancos’ 14, despite losing 3-0.
“This is a team that knows it goes forward,” Michel has said.
Villareal star Ramon Terrats said: “They’re the team that play the best football in primera division.
“It’s lovely to see them play. It’s hard when you’re against them but they’re nice to watch.”
The defeat was a setback, but Girona were already scaling vertiginous heights on the ladder. And they rebounded by winning the next five games in a row, including two more massive scorelines – a 4-2 and a 5-2.
Then, in early December, came the result that announced Girona to the world – beating Barcelona for the first time ever.
Ahead of the game, Girona manager Michel had said: “If we win at Barcelona, this club will indeed enter a new dimension.”
They did just that, a famous 4-2 victory that humbled their neighbouring giants.
Girona were back on top of the table, two points clear of Real Madrid and seven ahead of Barcelona.
“For some people it’s a surprise that Girona are co-leaders with Real Madrid, but for us, no,” Barcelona coach and legendary former player Xavi said afterwards.
“Michel is a great coach, with a system very similar to ours. Excellent, just congratulate them! They’re playing with a spectacular flair. They can fight for the title. They are brave and that’s what has put them there.”
It was high praise. Michel, meanwhile, downplayed Xavi’s call that his team could challenge for the title – but couldn’t shy away from what a magnificent performance it was.
“It’s not our target to win La Liga and I don’t want to compare our team to anyone, but we play really, really well,” the 48-year-old said.
“It was a great advert for La Liga, two teams wanting to attack and score goals. Any football fan watching this will have ended up feeling more sympathy for Girona. I don’t know if we can win La Liga, but tonight I realised we can beat any opponent.”
And not just beat any opponent, but do so playing in a style reminiscent of Guardiola’s Barcelona, of Manchester City. A thrilling, rollercoaster of attack – even if it means conceding plenty of goals at the other end.
That was summed up perfectly in their second historic victory this season, beating Atletico Madrid 4-3 in stoppage time last week. It was, just like against Barcelona, the first time Girona had ever beaten Atletico.
That victory was their 15th from 19 games, with just three draws and one loss (to Real Madrid). The minnows sit level on points with Los Blancos (both 48) on top the ladder, second only on goal difference – but remarkably, having scored six more goals than the Madrid giants this season.
They are seven points clear of Barcelona, and ten ahead of Atletico Madrid and Athletic Club de Bilbao.
As Michel termed it, the club is well and truly in a ‘new dimension’.
BUT CAN THEY WIN THE LOT?
But the 48-year-old is doing his level best to dampen expectations that they’ll be able to keep up their surprise title bid in the second half of the season.
“We cannot keep up with Madrid’s rhythm, we don’t want to put that label on ourselves (of challengers),” the Spaniard said.
“To talk about bigger things, like the Champions League, we have to get to the last 10 matches … then I’ll be ready to talk about our next objective.”
“(Winning the league) is not the objective, the objective is first to think game by game, and try to reach Europe, which would already be a success for us,” he added.
And that’s perhaps the most surprising thing about this remarkable rise. Girona were never meant to be in the hunt for the title.
They themselves set the target at the start of the season of reaching European football. The top four teams qualify for the Champions League, fifth the Europa League, and sixth the Europa Conference League qualifying stages. Even finishing sixth, for Girona, would be a remarkable success.
But now, the fans at the tiny Montelivi stadium are dreaming of higher honours. On a minuscule budget, with a hodgepodge team of discards and loanees, they could become just the third team outside of the Spanish ‘big two’ of Barcelona and Real Madrid to win the league this century.
And for once, Pere Guardiola might just outshine his brother.
