They say lightning never strikes twice - unless you’re a Sevilla fan
In 2000, Sevilla football club found themselves in the second division of Spanish football. For a club of Sevilla’s stature, there was no reason for them to be playing second-tier football and yet there they were. Overambition and reckless spending, stemming from an overwhelming lust to win La Liga - had slapped them with a relegation which took them years to recover from.
Fast-forward to the present day and history has nearly repeated itself. Sevilla find themselves in an eerily similar situation with their only saving grace being the fact that they haven’t been relegated… yet. After escaping the drop zone by just one point, the fans have truly had enough and the writing might just be on the wall for the European giants.
2 years ago, today - Sevilla beat Roma on penalties to win the Europa league for a record 7th time whilst also making it their 5th UEL title in the last 9 years. Sevilla had become synonymous with an air of dominance in Europe’s second most prestigious which can only be likened to that of Real Madrid’s in the Champions League. It seemed every time they were in that competition, no matter what was happening domestically - they would find a way of winning it.
But that was the problem. These titles made everyone ignore what was happening inside the club and their win against Roma glossed over the fact that Sevilla were no longer a top European club.
Sevilla were one of the best run clubs on the continent spearheaded by infamous sporting director Monchi. The Spaniard was the one who masterminded Sevilla’s escape from La Liga B and eventual return to European stardom. He operated intelligently and carefully with Sevilla buying players for cheap, maximising their abilities to the fullest and then selling them for huge profit. It was a tried and tested strategy but for Monchi and Los Palanganas, it worked and it worked very well. First, it was Monchi and Emery who are now working together at Aston Villa. Whilst at Sevilla, they won 3 Europa leagues on the bounce together - cementing them in European folklore. But Emery was recruited by PSG (we know how that went) and Monchi left shortly after due to huge instability created by politics revolving around the club’s owners - which forced him out to Roma.
Monchi’s tenure at Roma was pretty rubbish as he failed to deliver on what was expected of him and he quickly returned to the Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan after just two years. Sevilla fans didn’t care what had happened in Rome and Monchi’s return was met with huge anticipation and excitement amongst the fanbase. And the fans had every reason to be excited as Sevilla finished in the top 4 for three consecutive years for the first time in their history, from 2019/20 to 2021/22 and won a Europa League title in the process. Through this time, they had created one of the best defensive cores in Europe with only Real Madrid and Manchester City keeping more clean sheets in the process. Sevilla manager at the time - Julen Lopetegui, had struck a formidable partnership with Monchi which many fans thought was just the start of a golden age for Sevilla.
But, unfortunately for Sevilla fans - that was the best it was ever going to get.
You see, when Monchi returned to the club - he returned with a slightly different goal in his mind.
He wanted to win La Liga.
Monchi saw a Real Madrid team struggling to replace Cristiano Ronaldo, a Barcelona side that was spending stupidly to recover the loss of Neymar and an Atletico Madrid outfit who had just lost their star player Antoine Griezmann - and to him it was the weakest that the big 3 had ever been. There was no better chance to go and grab that title which had eluded them for 70 years and so the Sevilla sporting director switched up his strategy. Instead of the small and intricate investments that had brought Sevilla so much success in the last decade, there was now slightly more ambition to the club's transfers. Targets now mainly consisted of players in-and-around their peak years who had the necessary experience to catapult them to glory. And in the beginning, it was working with many big-money signings working well with the talented young players already at the club. Fernando, Luuk de Jong, Ivan Rakitic, Papu Gómez, Marcos Acuña, Thomas Delaney, Jesús Corona, Anthony Martial, Alex Telles, Isco and Érik Lamela were all brought in between 2019 and 2022 with some faring more successfully than others. At the squads peak in 2021/22, they were directly competing with Real Madrid for the La Liga title in the first half of the season before capitulating in 2022 but still finishing 4th.
However, in the summer of 2022, many of Sevilla’s young stars were snapped up by top European sides. Jules Kounde and Diego Calos - Sevilla’s best two players and defenders were sold for a pretty penny but it would prove extremely difficult to replace them. What was left behind after the summer was a very old squad with little ability to score goals and now a tendency to concede quite a lot, after their two star centre-backs left. Sevilla were no longer the outfit they were a season or two ago and Lopetegui was given the boot after he managed just one win in his first 10 La Liga games. Jorge Sampaoli replaced him and made it to March 2023 before he too was sacked.
Jose Luis Mendilibar, famous for his ability to rescue teams in dire situations - was appointed and Sevilla managed to climb the table to a measly 12th place and also somehow win the Europa League. Sevilla ought to have counted themselves lucky they still were able to get their hands on some silverware after such a dismal season and this should’ve served as a period of serious reflection and long-term planning for the future - however little changed. Monchi left for Villa and was replaced by Victor Orta - a man who had worked under Monchi for 7 years. Orta showed he wasn’t up to the task with a series of questionable transfers and managerial hirings and firings and Sevilla slid further down the table.
For all of Monchi’s success at Sevilla, his idea to turn Sevilla into title-challengers proved fatal. Sevilla were spending a lot of money on players who never proved to be worth it and there was a certain pandemic on the horizon which was only about to make matters worse. During Covid, Sevilla kept spending and spending and all of a sudden they were financially in the mud. The young, cheap signings that Sevilla now had to revert back to - were no longer working and it became evident that there was a real lack of quality in the squad. During the 23/24 season, Sevilla set a record in the Champions League for the oldest ever starting eleven to start a game (32 years and 19 days) whilst also easily being the oldest team in La Liga. Finishing 14th, the 2023/24 season was a horrible one for everyone connected to the club but not even a €100 million loan in March 2024 could save them from an even worse season to follow.
Sevilla have now had 5 managers in their last 2 seasons and after just escaping relegation by the skin of their teeth - the future looks really, really bleak for the Spanish club. In recent years, they used to always be able to depend on the talented academy to provide a spark when in desperate need of one, but even that has seemed to dry up. The state of the club can be summed up by the fact that the Sevilla players were forced to sleep at the training ground amid huge safety concerns arising from a large number of fans being seen on social media outside the training complex, sporting pyrotechnics and threatening club officials.
Months back, we wrote about Valencia’s demise which miraculously turned around in the second half of the season (a link to this story can be found here) and I think the situation Sevilla find themselves in, may be even worse.
With no saleable assets, no money whatsoever and no young players to call on - the future of the football club is a worrying one and I’m not sure where they can turn at this point. They can only hope the 3 promoted sides are worse than them because I don’t see much improvement being made in the next year or so.
Maybe a once-in-a-lifetime managerial appointment will get Sevilla out of this rut or maybe an unexpected player will take the leap to suddenly become one of the leagues stars - stranger things have happened. The one thing I can be sure of is that it would be a massive shame and huge loss to football if Sevilla found themselves in La Liga B in the next year or two. But, my word - it would be extremely poetic.
I guess not everyone learns from their past mistakes.
