Marked for Luis Solignac
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad9 Nov 2026
2 kept out from twelve yards, and a stadium that will describe each of them for twenty years. A goalkeeper needs one night like this in a career, and this was it.
Match4 Nov 2026
Cup ties wait for somebody to seize them, and Fede Vico obliged against Getafe. 2‑2 on the night, and the name in the next round’s hat is Levante.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 33. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match7 Nov 2026
4 matches without a win for Levante
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Levante are no longer polite ones.
Squad9 Nov 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Iván Romero and Levante agree another 4 years.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Jeremy Toljan was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Match7 Nov 2026
Levante are shipping goals every week
Two or more conceded in each of the last 4 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
The terraces9 Nov 2026
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Market9 Nov 2026
One of our own: Biel Molina joins the Levante first team
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Biel Molina is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The dugout2 Nov 2026
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad2 Nov 2026
A falling-out at Levante
Manu Sánchez and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
Mathew Ryan gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Match31 Oct 2026
0‑2 to Rayo Vallecano, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Joseba Zaldua falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad2 Nov 2026
200 appearances for Oriol Rey
200 games in these colours. Service of that kind gets rarer every season, and the crowd knows it.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Levante are still strangers to each other
15 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑2 Antonio Flores left the room before anybody could ask which.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 15. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Sep 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Market14 Sep 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Levante heard it as anything else.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Manu Sánchez in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Levante this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market14 Sep 2026
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Ignacio Marín has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Levante training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Aïssa Mandi is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Market14 Sep 2026
No place for Fede Vico in the plan
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Fede Vico has his answer from Levante; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The manager makes an example of Luis Solignac
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Antonio Flores chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
Squad14 Sep 2026
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
The clubs have shaken hands with Barracas Central; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
No deal for David Alaba at that price
Levante offered $1.0M; Real Madrid said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Porto keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Jeremy Toljan was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad17 Aug 2026
14 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Diego Jiménez and Levante agree another 1 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad17 Aug 2026
No place for Luis Solignac in the new shape
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Levante are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
Levante turn down the training-ground plan
It is the quietest way a club tells you what its ambitions are. The money was asked for, the money was refused, and the people who work there every day now know exactly where they stand.