Betis Sevilla have specialized in rebuilding players who were lost

Reading the starting lineup of Betis Sevilla, you risk being sucked into a sort of "revival effect". Like those sweaty summer nights when a DJ tries to repopulate a deserted dance floor by putting on a song that had been successful some time before and then got lost in oblivion. An alienating sensation that explains the present of this Betis rather well, a team that resembles a Frankenstein assembled with other people's scraps , an entity that is closer to the Brancaleone army than to the hoplite phalanx.

At least on paper. Because the field is telling a very different story .

Andalusia has been living in the Upside Down for a couple of seasons. Sevilla, the club that won the Europa League seven times in the new millennium, is fighting to avoid relegation. Betis, the club that for two decades has produced buckets of bile for the successes of their cousins, finds itself in Europe. And now it also risks raising its first international trophy to the sky. A story built in reverse not with injections of capital, but by becoming aware of a rather brutal reality. Namely that top-tier players would never have chosen to go to Betis . If not to find themselves. It is from this starting point that in the last two years the club's sports director, Manu Fajardo, has built his method. The black and green market men have drawn up reports on all the players with two fundamental characteristics. They had to have high potential. But they also had to come from a couple of complicated years. The goal was to regenerate them, to give them a second sporting life. It meant forming a group by bringing together many different solitudes.

The most important piece was the arrival of Isco . At thirty-one, the midfielder from Benalmádena had lived an infinite number of different lives. A great promise for Malaga who had reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League, the designated heir to his majesty Andres Iniesta in Lopetegui's national team, a star for Zinedine Zidane's Real Madrid. But something suddenly changed. Isco first became an outcast for the Merengues, then a walk-on for Sevilla, and finally an unemployed footballer . Until Betis offered him a contract in July 2023. It was something very close to a lifebelt. Either the midfielder grabbed it and tried to save his life or his career would be wrecked. Once and for all. The green and white shirt changed the ending of the story of a footballer capable of winning five Champions Leagues. To the point of making him embody that aphorism by Pavese: "I found companions by finding myself". The Spaniard has blossomed again. He has started dancing between the lines again with his lanky, almost phlegmatic step, hiding the ball between his arched shins. In the first 15 days the midfielder did not play a single minute due to a fibula injury. Then when he returned he was simply devastating: nine goals and eight assists in the league. Two goals and two winning passes in the Conference League. The Spaniard is no longer the croqueta wizard, the right-left with which he made the ball disappear and reappear. Now he is a player capable of influencing the fortunes of a team again. And he managed to win back the national team. Thanks also to what was built around him.

The list of flops that have been rebuilt at Betis is impressive. In defense there is Natan , the man who last year arrived in Naples to replace Kim and who soon became a godsend for the opposing attackers. On the left there is Ricardo Rodriguez , a former Wolfsfurg full-back who at Milan and Turin had become one of many. But above all up front there are Lo Celso , one of Tottenham's unsolved puzzles, and Antony , mister 95 million euros elected by fans and insiders as the grand vizier of all the "duds" in United's history .

The first to arrive in Andalusia, seven years ago, was Marc Bartra, the centre-back who in Barcelona was considered Piqué's heir and who then turned out to be simply himself. All under the direction of Manuel Pellegrini, 72 years old, a dream maker for provincial teams and a national title won with City. After his experience in China and at West Ham he seemed to have chosen Betis as a buen retiro. Until the 2022 Copa del Rey. Until tonight. Because for the black and greens this Conference is worth as much as a Champions League.

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