Mallorca made Sevilla work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings22 Feb 2027
Kang-In Lee was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.13. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Chidera Ejuke trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sevilla know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Sevilla asked and Newcastle United said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
$9.8M was the most the club would pay and Zaragoza were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Sevilla have done the hard part with Atlético Madrid, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Giorgi Kochorashvili 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.
“I watch every Sevilla game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Getafe runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Sevilla will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
0‑3 against Atlético Madrid, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Successful dribbles: 19. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sevilla this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Isaac Romero trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Girona next, and one man in the Sevilla dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Two goals and a mark of 8.62 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
At 23 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.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Alfon was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.29. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Marked 8.22 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
“I did not go to Sanluqueño to sit and watch. I want to come back to Sevilla and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 9 matches say the rest.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Isaac Romero
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
In brief
The dugoutRubén Vargas has become a man the manager trusts
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Rafa Romero 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sevilla know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Chances created: 9. Nothing on the scoresheet and everything in the match: the pass before the pass, over and over, until the defence stopped guessing right.
Celta next, and one man in the Sevilla dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
In brief
The dugoutThe plan did not have a place for Marcão
The 88th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Alfon decided nobody was going anywhere. Athletic Bilbao had no time left to answer.
A 1‑0 win over Athletic Bilbao, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Manu Bueno and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Successful dribbles: 15. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Diego Cruz kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Shots: 10. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
In brief
The dugoutGabriel Suazo asks for a word with the manager
The dugoutThe plan did not have a place for Marcão
The clubs have shaken hands with Real Madrid; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Sevilla have done the hard part with Real Sociedad, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Sevilla will try again when the window opens; Porto may not be selling by then.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Almería have kept their man, and Sevilla go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 20 arrived, 4 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Juan Iglesias has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.