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Sid LoweSpain writer
At the end of the longest season there has ever been, with 2019-20 still going on when others started with 2020-21, Sevilla FC manager Julen Lopetegui broke down and shed tears. And do not think for a moment that he was the only one. Sevilla, somehow, was gone and did it again – just as they always do. The UEFA Cup, the Europa League, call it what you will, it’s theirs. A dramatic 3-2 victory over Internazionale means Sevilla have never lost a final; they have never even reached the quarters and
For the sixth time – almost a third of all those played in this century – Sevilla won it. They won it in 2006, 2007, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2020. Six decorated the T-shirts they had made. On them was the late Antonio Puerta, winner in 2006 and 2007, scoring the late, late goal she went through in his second season. And the late Jose Antonio Reyes, the man who has won this league more times than anyone else, the child who cried when he first left Sevilla and who returned years later. Just in case anyone doubted what this meant.
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At the end of a long, dramatic night, a finale that was absurdly good fun, where the 40 people in the stands tried to be 40,000 and to fill a void it is impossible to fill, the national anthem of the club ran in an otherwise empty area, Jesus Navas lifted the UEFA Cup trophy – and what a wonderful trophy it is. It’s his third, 13 years after his second. And still he goes. He walked away for a long time. When he returned, everything had changed but this. Something about Sevilla remains, their relationship with the competition that has made them. The competition they have helped in turn.
Navas is just one. Forty-nine players have won six Europa League titles for Sevilla, and those are just the starters in each of those finals. There is something almost mystical about this club in this competition. And there they performed, as if by magic. Another victory against another club much bigger than theirs when it comes to objective measures. But who cares about that now? Sevilla do more with less.
Along the way, there were three coaches, two presidents, and only one sports director – of course. A long way off, Ivan Rakitic, a winner in 2014, threw himself into a swimming pool to celebrate. Seville does that to you. You can check out if you want, but you can never leave.
In Cologne, Germany, they all performed. Diego Carlos, scoring the overhead header that won it and accounted for it, he remembered, for the goals it almost did not win, cried. His partner, too often overlooked, had removed one from the line. Now Jules Kounde, with his New York ’80s aesthetic, is talking about beaming. Sergio Reguilon was sitting on the field, phone in hand, a lump in his throat. Luuk de Jong, the scorer of ‘almost goals’ all season, had scored two actual goals when it really mattered. Three, in fact, if you count the semi-finals, you really have to.
Lopetegui, a substitute goalkeeper for so much of his playing career – a man who knows, in other words – sat down and talked to Tomas Vacik, the man who had lost his place to Bono.
“I was always in the boat, even when I wasn’t playing,” Bono said. Well, he had rescued them, cheered by the man he had passed over. In the stands, directors embraced. The press officer, a member of the club who returned 45 years ago, rode on the ground on his moped during the week, roared. So did the season 2020 membership number – the year – and August 21 – the date: Sevilla had allowed 25 fans to be invited, which was impossible, so they invited those two in representation of the rest.
There’s an old photo of Julen Lopetegui. In it, his father, a champion Basque stone lift, raises his siblings in the air. At his side stands little Julen. This time, very, many years later, his players picked him up, and threw him into the air. When a picture paints a thousand words, it paints a thousand pictures … well, many, but not enough. There’s one more simple shot that says something special. Navas and Ever Banega sit together with her back to the camera while Escudero stands above her with the Reyes and Puerta shirt. Between the two the trophy they each won three times: in 2006, 2006, 2015, 2016, and 2020.
Navas can return for more – although Sevilla are in the Champions League next season, their own league outgrown – but Banega can not. This was his last night and it was the way he wanted it. The way, in fact, that he said it would be. In early 2020, he announced that he would be going to Saudi Arabia. After a decade that took it seriously, under all that pressure, it was time to go, he said. But he would not stop until he stopped, he said. He would not tool down early. “I trust him,” Lopetegui said. And he was absolutely right to do so.
On a day when he was at the gas station many years ago, Banega dropped the handbrake on his car. When he entered the store, he saw it rolling away. A footballer, always about touching, about controlling, he tried to stop it with his foot. For the first – and probably the last – time he failed, breaking his ankle. Another day he arrived on foot at training. A few hundred meters down the road, his car caught fire. There was the internet chat room where he revealed a little more than he should have. Accusations about how he looked after himself, what he did with his free time.
But, boy, could he play. Better than others. And at Seville he found a place to do so. There was something about him that they liked: redemption, that central arc of all the great narratives in sports, was his specialty. They liked the fact that he could be seen as flawed; they found the fact that he was a footballer – and what a footballer – even more so. It was good, but not perfect, which was better.
He went to Italy and back: it was not right there, but it was right here. Atletico Madrid, Valencia, they were fine (well, sort of), but they were not the same. Over time, he felt he belonged in Sevilla, the club that not only draws players better than anyone else, but manages them better than anyone else.
The vision, the passing, the quality has never left him. That feeling that he belongs to another age, that was him, unlike many
Banega’s football was real, always. He played and made them play too. “Sevilla play well if Banega plays well,” Lopetegui said rightly. He was man of the match in the final in 2015 and again in 2016. He led. Do not shake, do not shake his fist, but with football. There was something about him that drove the group as well. It was a controversy when he was sent off for kicking the ball away after the whistle. Sevilla’s players now seemed to think the job was done and acted more defensively, just waiting for the ref to blow the final whistle. Banega – but there was another lecture: a cohesion, a collective, that he promoted.
When he left, it could break. He decided to go to Saudi Arabia. After a decade at the top in Europe, it was time to step back. The offer was too good to refuse. But not so good to let go of everything while he waited. No way. Some doubted him. Some doubt Sevilla. Why play a man more out than in? The answer was simple: because he was still in, and just because he was leaving soon, he was even more “in” than others, even more “in” than he had ever been. He would do anything to go the right way. He insists, she insists. That he he I.
Easy to say, but he proved it. After lockdown, he played only one game each game. While some players moved to COVID-19 to their clubs, he did not: he signed a short-term deal to look forward to his final season, which did not have to be his last season at all. And he played, and he let, and he was as good as his word. Oh, and he will miss. And how. No one really plays like Ever Banega. “I told him he could not go,” Fernando said. But on Friday night he did that; he put Sevilla away with the Sevilla Cup in hand.
“I said goodbye the way I deserve,” he said. The rest of us wish he was not, but what a way to go.
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