Girona finally won a game of football on Friday night, and rarely has a victory ever felt so overdue.
Throughout an impressive 2-1 win over Athletic Club, Michel’s men were energetic, enthusiastic, and easy on the eye, almost exactly as they have been for the last two, winless months.
Even as they caught fire in a 5-3 defeat to Real Sociedad, rattled crossbars and posts in a 1-1 draw at the Santiago Bernabeu, the newly-promoted side picked up three points and zero wins from a bemusing run of seven games, as they contrived to miss from 12 yards and concede from 45 along the way.
Amidst the violent surges of Girona’s LaLiga voyage, however, has remained one, unwavering constant. For while the Catalan side may struggle to put the ball into the back of the net, they certainly don’t ever struggle to move it around the centre of the pitch, with one man in the middle waving the baton.
Only Toni Kroos has completed or attempted more passes in LaLiga than Aleix García this season, and only Iago Aspas has assisted more shots. Nobody has switched or crossed the ball more, while only Ousmane Dembélé, statistically, deserves to have assisted more goals. In a league renowned for its creatives, its technical masters, to have one player stand out so brightly, away from Barcelona, Real Madrid and the higher echelons of Spanish football, is quite the extraordinary achievement.
The former Manchester City youngster was everywhere, again, last night, as he not only assisted Girona’s opener with a devilish dead-ball delivery, but supplied eight crosses, speared five long balls, and hit the target himself three times from midfield. The weekend before, sharing the same pitch as Kroos, Modrić, Camavinga and Valverde, he created two big chances, and misplaced just one of his 62 passes.
While the 25-year-old ultimately finds himself at one of City’s sister clubs, García’s route to Montilivi has not followed the usual script. Released by Pep Guardiola’s side in 2020 after a loan spell at Royal Excel Mouscron in Belgium, the youngster spent half a season embroiled in a Romanian relegation scrap at Dinamo Bucuresti, before Eibar picked him up for free in January.
The Basque side’s relegation allowed Girona to swoop for a player they themselves had on loan from Manchester in 2016, securing him again, for free, but this time, on a permanent deal.
Now thriving alongside another City loanee, Yangel Herrera, in an exciting, dynamic midfield, García’s understated rise to stardom becomes even more intriguing. A talent that many seem to have missed, Girona have nurtured, trusted, and unleashed for all of Spain to see.
Indeed, that win over Athletic Club last night felt like the Eureka moment, the clicking together of Michel’s meddling in one, pristine performance. With Herrera the marauding number eight, charging from box to box, and Oriol Romeu the immaculate anchor, breaking up attacks and patrolling the middle third, García was given freedom to find space and drop into pockets as often as he could, allowing the former floppy-haired midfielder to control the tempo of the game.
Now the streak has been broken, it will be fascinating to see if Girona can push on, and perhaps claw back some points that somehow slipped away during their perplexing seven-game slump.
With a trip to bottom side Elche up next, expect that three-man midfield to dominate once more, as Aleix García continues to bask in the Spanish spotlight, when just a few years ago, nobody would have believed that he could.