“It took 147 days for Rayo Vallecano to walk out for a competitive game on the Avenida de Albufera and 24 minutes and 56 seconds for them to walk off again. Half of those had been spent watching thousands of paper planes touch down on the turf, play suspended while a message was delivered, over and over, until it was impossible to avoid. Forced from their home, the team from the barrio had been away for five months. On the bright Saturday afternoon that they came back, there were just 13 minutes of football, a fans’ protest instead forcing the abandonment of their match with Athletic Club, the latest episode in a never-ending story. The last time there had been a league game here was a victory over Villarreal in May. A lot has happened since: little Rayo, Rayo Vallecano, had played a European final, 11,000 fans heading to Leipzig where, as the banner perfectly put it, they knew no greater victory than being with you in defeat. Iñigo Pérez, the manager who took them there, had departed. …”
Guardian
Grounded: Rayo Vallecano’s paper planes bring club’s crisis into the open
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“Diego Simeone is such an established part of top-level European football that you sometimes forget how unusual his tenure is. Approaching 15 years in charge of Atletico Madrid, ‘only’ winning two league titles doesn’t quite summarise his considerable impact on European football, and the extent to which he has overachieved in a division that had become a two-horse race. Atletico had spent the previous decade as a mid-table side in La Liga, even dropping into Spain’s second tier for a couple of seasons. It is one of the most impressive dynasties in the modern game, and all the more special because of something we all know, but take for granted: Simeone is South American. For all the South American playing talent in European football over the decades, it’s very rare for a South American manager or head coach to succeed in Europe. …”
