Surging Racing Santander Holds On To Defeat Slumping Sevilla

When the Rac­ing de San­tander board fired Juan Car­los Mandiá on Novem­ber 9, the team had only won one game out of ten in La Liga, and they had lost the first leg in the Round of 32 of the Copa del Rey against UD Sala­manca, a mid-table club in the Segunda División.  This job was Mandiá‘s first in the top flight, as his pre­vi­ously man­aged teams, Logroñés, Hér­cules, and Real Madrid Castilla, were all in the lower divi­sions of Span­ish foot­ball.  Mandiá looked over­matched by his man­ag­ing brethren, and the play­ers never looked to respond to their newest coach.

In the last fifty-five years, Rac­ing de San­tander has only fin­ished in the top ten three times in La Liga.  Some of those years were spent in the lower divi­sions, so expec­ta­tions were not nec­es­sar­ily sky high in San­tander.  Two of those three top-ten places occurred in the last three years, includ­ing a sur­pris­ing sixth and a UEFA Cup spot in the 2007-08 cam­paign, so when Rac­ing was in 17th head­ing into the inter­na­tional break on Novem­ber 9, the Cantabri­ans had enough of Juan Car­los Mandiá.  Rac­ing chair­man Fran­cisco Pernía turned back to the future, as he bestowed the reins of his club to Miguel Ángel Por­tu­gal, who guided Los Verdi­blan­cos to a respectable tenth place fin­ish in the 2006-07 sea­son.  The goal was sim­ple for Por­tu­gal: avoid relegation.

Com­ing off the inter­na­tional break, Rac­ing faced two dif­fi­cult foes in suc­ces­sion: Real Madrid and Deportivo La Coruña, two teams fly­ing high in the top five of the table.  Although Rac­ing lost both of these matches, Portugal’s stamp had been sealed on the team in a short amount of time.  The defen­sive inep­ti­tude that clearly marred Juan Car­los Mandiá‘s reign at the club was all but abol­ished as both Real Madrid and Deportivo La Coruña fought hard for their 1–0 vic­to­ries.  Even Depor’s man­ager, Miguel Ángel Lotina, felt as though his team was lucky to earn all three points against Rac­ing.

If Por­tu­gal and Rac­ing de San­tander were not favored to gar­ner any points against Real Madrid and Deportivo La Coruña, the three matches lead­ing into the Christ­mas break were cru­cial for Racing’s fate in La Liga.  They played an Espanyol team who lost their last three matches, scor­ing zero while con­ced­ing seven.  Rac­ing dis­missed Los Periq­ui­tos with shock­ing ease, as home­grown wün­derkind Ser­gio Canales scored his first two goals for the club in a 0–4 romp at the Estadi Cornellà-El Prat.  Admit­tedly green, both fig­u­ra­tively and lit­er­ally, this eighteen-year-old, who grew up within walk­ing dis­tance of El Sar­dinero, had been thrust upon the watch­ing eyes of Spain by his stel­lar play.

Los Racin­guis­tas brought their momen­tum back to their friendly con­fines in San­tander, and with a match against 20th place Xerez, con­fi­dence was at a sea­son high.  Appar­ently, some­one for­got to tell Xerez that they were sup­posed to lie down at Racing’s expense, and with a quar­ter of an hour remain­ing, it was 2–2.  Even more amaz­ing than the score itself was that Xerez had only scored once away from El Chapín all sea­son, and they dou­bled this amount in sixty-nine min­utes.  An Alexan­dre Geijo header in the 82nd minute, how­ever, foiled Xerez’s attempt at a third road point, and Rac­ing San­tander rose from the rel­e­ga­tion places to a ten­u­ous fif­teenth in the table.

Rac­ing would have done well to get a result at El Sar­dinero against Vil­lar­real to end the 2009 cal­en­dar year, and while they forced Vil­lar­real to play for some stretches of the match, Vil­lar­real com­fort­ably dis­missed the Cantabri­ans 2–0 in a match con­cern­ing two in-form teams.  Despite the loss, six points out of nine going into the Christ­mas break gave Miguel Ángel Por­tu­gal and his men the impe­tus to con­tinue with their decent play.

A hard-fought 2–0 win at home against lower table rivals Tener­ife to start 2010 showed that Rac­ing could string together a series of results.  Look­ing at the sit­u­a­tion with a skep­ti­cal eye, they achieved their wins against teams in the bot­tom rungs of the lad­der, and their one truly qual­ity oppo­nent in this stretch, Vil­lar­real, ran them off the pitch.  Many, if not all, would have had lit­tle faith that they could stay with title con­tenders Sevilla at the Esta­dio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán this past Saturday.

Ser­gio Canales received the back­ing of his man­ager, started in the tre­quartista posi­tion just behind the lone striker Xisco, and was flanked by Pedro Muni­tis on his right and Óscar Ser­rano on his left.  While Sevilla dom­i­nated pos­ses­sion and bossed the game in Racing’s own half of the field, the Cantabri­ans were the ones who cap­i­tal­ized on their chances in the first half.

Before Canales scored the open­ing goal in the 26th minute, he fired well wide on three sep­a­rate occa­sions, and while he can be faulted for his errant boot, he worked him­self into the right posi­tions to take the oppor­tu­ni­ties at goal.  His posi­tional sense rivals that of a world-class vet­eran, and at such a young age, this is truly remarkable.

The move started with Gon­zalo Colsa, who played a diag­o­nal ground ball from the mid­field line to Pedro Muni­tis.  The wily Muni­tis then played a through ball that sliced the Sevilla back line and sent Canales free for a one on one with Andrés Palop.  At the vital moment, Canales decided to chip it over Sevilla goal­keeper and cap­tain Andrés Palop, and that finesse shot was a won­der­ful finish.

As was their modus operandi through­out the match, Manolo Jiménez fur­ther enforced the attack, and Rac­ing Santander’s sec­ond goal in the 38th minute fur­ther faded Sevilla’s increas­ingly slim hopes of a La Liga crown.  Rac­ing shred­ded the defense again, and Canales’ cool com­po­sure revealed the pre­co­cious nature of his abil­ity.  On the counter-attack, Muni­tis was fouled, but ref­eree Manuel Mejuto González played the advan­tage, and Xisco’s cut­ting through-ball sent Canales on another free run.  Palop decided to rush off his line, but Canales saw this and went around him, then cut back again when a Sevilla defender nearly caught up with him, and shot at the open net for the implau­si­ble 0–2 lead for the visitors.

Rac­ing San­tander had to hold on for the entire sec­ond half, as Sevilla put severe pres­sure on the Rac­ing mid­field and defense.  Sevilla did get one goal back from Rac­ing goal­keeper Fabio Coltorti’s minor error, but they held on just long enough to secure their biggest win of the sea­son.  As for Sevilla, they con­tin­ued their slump in La Liga; their momen­tum from their Copa del Rey first leg win over Barcelona at the Camp Nou did not carry over, as again, they did not defeat a team they should beat.

Is it the inspi­ra­tion of the new man­ager, Miguel Ángel Por­tu­gal?  Is it the infu­sion of youth­ful exu­ber­ance with Ser­gio Canales fea­tur­ing more in the start­ing eleven?  Is it the rel­a­tively poor play of their oppo­nents dur­ing this streak?  As with most sit­u­a­tions, there is always a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors that con­tribute to suc­cess, but the defen­sive dis­ci­pline instilled by the man­ager has been one of the major keys in Racing’s hot run.  They love to counter-attack, espe­cially with Muni­tis, Canales, and Serrano’s speed, but in order to best use their abil­i­ties, the defense needs to stand firm.  Pablo Pinil­los, the Rac­ing cap­tain and leader of the defen­sive line, has inspired a pre­vi­ously life­less group, and their effort and spirit has led to more scor­ing chances.

The big Euro­pean clubs are queu­ing up to snare Ser­gio Canales, but as most trans­fer news is merely dis­trac­tion in Jan­u­ary, Rac­ing de San­tander will only look for­ward, as the cliché goes, one game at a time.  Despite the recent eupho­ria in San­tander, they are only five points above the rel­e­ga­tion zone, and a momen­tary dip in form will see them back in the dog­fight to stay in Spain’s top divi­sion.  They have to keep believ­ing that they are fight­ing rel­e­ga­tion through­out the rest of the sea­son, even if they are in a nom­i­nally com­fort­able twelfth place as of this round.  They can­not afford to rest on their lau­rels, but a gal­va­niz­ing Rac­ing de San­tander brings an excit­ing ele­ment to La Liga for those who tire of the Barcelona — Real Madrid melodrama.

Tagged as: barcelona, Copa del Rey, deportivo la coruna, espanyol, Europa League, juan carlos mandia, La Liga, Manolo Jimenez, Miguel Angel Portugal, pedro munitis, racing santander, real madrid, Segunda Division, Sergio Canales, sevilla, tenerife, uefa cup, villarreal, xerez