Just after game time, Iago Aspas was activated on the bench to enter the game. In reality he didn’t have to stretch, he was already in a trance from the beginning, confined to where he hates watching football the most. Claudio Giráldez, their coach, measures efforts, measures them and is also not afraid to give minutes and stripes to his excellent youth players. The young light blue coach is ensuring that all his players are important. But Iago is something else. It hurts to see him on the bench even though he is over 37 years old and it is advisable to measure his efforts. “I’m old enough,” the forward resigns himself before his penultimate rebellion. “But what I want is to play.”
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Vicente Guaita, Marcos Alonso, Javi Rodríguez, Carlos Domínguez, Sergio Carreira (Hugo Álvarez, min. 45), Damián Rodríguez, Ilaix Moriba (Iago Aspas, min. 64), Óscar Mingueza, Borja Iglesias (Tasos Douvikas, min. 57) , Pablo Durán (Hugo Sotelo, min. 64) and Alfon González (Williot Swedberg, min. 57)
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Paulo Gazzaniga, Alejandro Francés, Miguel Gutiérrez, Ladislav Krejcí, Daley Blind (David López, min. 53), Iván Martín, Yangel Herrera (Jhon Solís, min. 71), Viktor Tsyhankov, Oriol Romeu (Donny van de Beek, min. 13), Arnaut Danjuma (Bryan Gil, min. 71) and Abel Ruiz (Portu, min. 71)
Goals
0-1 min. 37: Yangel Herrera. 1-1 min. 80: Blades
Referee Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea
yellow cards
Hugo Álvarez (min. 77)
Aspas jumped onto the field and everything changed. Before him, three teammates had taken the field. It was, with Hugo Sotelo, the last change. With Swedberg in the midfield and Douvikas in the forward, two refreshments too, Moaña’s as a regista. He took the baton and started spreading football. And he acted as a goal scorer to score the goal that prevented Celta’s defeat (1-1) against a good Girona, which solved with some solvency the ambushes that the Vigo team made against them.
It was a vibrant match because that is how it was defined on boards in which pressures in the opposite field and pairings were drawn. There was audacity, risk and a call for effort in the tactics. The Girona players initially accepted the challenge that Celta posed, they looked into the eyes of their rival and were able to punish him with two initial shots by Yangel Herrera and Abel Ruiz. The back-and-forth was stopped by Míchel from the bench with a shout. “Calm down!” bellowed the excellent Vallecano coach. By then, fifteen minutes into the game, they had already lost Oriol Romeu, who was injured. Blind also fell minutes later, two setbacks with his eyes on the Champions League and Montilivi’s European debut against Feyenoord.
Girona needed to stop. He knew how to do it. He lowered the revs on the list and began to control it. He scored a goal on another arrival from Yangel Herrera, skilled at heading in a good serve from Blind. Celta changed its skin with the changes. The magnificent Hugo Álvarez gave him depth on the left and his new forward gave him the fang that Borja Iglesias lacked. Something is being built in Balaídos and with people from the house, but Aspas is still there as chief architect. In half an hour he lifted his team, hitting with his golden left foot just when Girona seemed to have everything more under control. Balaídos honored him in his 501st match with Celta. “For me it is a gift to play here,” he explained at the end.
