“Any other team would have let go,” Pepe Castro says, but then Sevilla Futbol Club are not any other team, not when it comes to the Europa League. It is not just that they have found a way past Manchester United and Juventus, “clubs that have four times our budget”, to reach their seventh final Europa League final that is so extraordinary, according to the club’s president, or even that they have done it in their worst season for 20 years, one in which they have had three managers and risked relegation. It is that they even tried.
When José Luis Mendilibar took over as coach in March, he came on a rescue mission, the situation at Sevilla so desperate that the sporting director hadn’t even left the scene of their latest defeat before calling. Sevilla were two points off the relegation zone, had lost three of their previous four matches and were falling apart. Mendilibar was their last throw of the dice, a man who had taken charge of more than 400 first-division games over a career that goes back 27 years but not at clubs such as this; instead, he said, he had spent his career “fighting for different things”. Survival, mostly.
Which was of course why they called, but that was not the only thing that mattered, even if it should have been. They had just about survived second-leg fightbacks from PSV Eindhoven and Fenerbahce in the Europa League but, the state they were in, there was no way they were going to be standing very much longer. Especially not when they were then drawn with Manchester United. Besides, the situation was so bad domestically that many thought they should dump Europe, more an impediment than anything else. “Sevilla could never do that,” Castro says.
Sevilla are the Europa League, their entire identity built around it, something almost magical about it. “No one loves it like us,” they are fond of saying. “For us, it’s made to measure, a place where we are able to to do incredible things, knocking out incredible teams, and not once, but again and again and again,” Castro says. “Everyone who comes here is told about the Europa League, about what we did; they’re told that this is everything to us, something that we feel is ours.”
That includes Mendilibar. “There is a moment when Sevilla were in a bad way,” Castro says. “When we spoke to him he told us he thought he had the antidote to fix the positions we had. Things were not good in the league and any other team would have left the Europa League to one side because we were near the bottom of the table, fighting relegation, but Sevilla never do that – and now look, we’re in another final. This has been the hardest of all the finals we have reached, because it came at a bad moment but we wouldn’t leave it.
“Of course we told Mendilibar that, but at Sevilla you don’t have to tell him because you get into the dressing room and the cups are all in there. The kitman, the physios, the staff: they all talk about what this means to us. The fans talk about it continuously. We all talk about what it means to us. He sees that it’s a priority and regardless of results in the league we always try to win the Europa League.”
Besides, why choose? If Mendilibar had come because he had much-needed experience of the fight that Sevilla found themselves in, he had only taken charge of two European games – in the Intertoto Cup in 2005, when his Athletic Bilbao team were knocked out by Cluj. His first proper European game was last month at Old Trafford, a place where he had never been. Tomorrow night will be only his fifth. Domestically too, things were improving. Enjoyably blunt, very old school, a man who says he felt like a bit of “dickhead” as people suddenly starting discovering him, they have lost twice in 15 games under him.
“He has a lot of experience but it is true that was mostly with teams who are smaller than Sevilla,” Castro says. “He has changed us like a sock, as we say in Spain. He came, he gave us order, tranquility, optimism. The team plays in a different way: more direct, more attacking, they don’t take so many risks at the back. He does all those things we needed to do given the position we were in. He told us he had watched and said he knew. We’re not surprised but we’re grateful. After so many years, this opportunity at Sevilla is a reward for him – and for us too, because all his experience and wisdom is now being used here, and hopefully we can say he too won the Europa League with us.”
After a poor start Sevilla sacked Julen Lopetegui, the coach who had qualified them for the Champions League three years in a row, but things only got worse under Jorge Sampaoli. The confusion was captured best in the moment Sampaoli sent on a piece of paper with instructions only to watch Marcos Acuña, the left-back, screw it up and throw it away. “It’s not that the players had a bad relationship with him personally; it was the system,” Castro claims. “Constantly trying to play out from the back. We conceded a lot of goals because of that. We took so many risks; the players were uneasy with that system.”
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Simplified, stripped down, Sevilla progressed under Mendilibar, soon leaving the drop zone behind. They advanced in Europe too, not that it was always straightforward. At Old Trafford, Mendilibar admitted, they “could have let in four”, but it ended 2-2. “When we got United in the draw, we thought that was bad luck: not just because of the economic potential but because they had beaten Betis, Atlético, Real Sociedad, and Barcelona,” Castro says. “There’s an extra pride in that, in being the only team that can being a trophy back to Spain. There’s a responsibility too, but we like that responsibility.
“When United scored two goals early on, I thought that if they get a third or a fourth the tie is over. But that’s not how it was. We played very well in the second half, and could even have won it. I knew that at home with our fans, with that something special we have, we could knock out a great team. It’s not just knocking them out; it’s winning 5-2.”
And so, via Juventus, to a seventh final. Sevilla have won all their major European finals; so, though, has José Mourinho. “If he has won five of five, we have won six of six,” Castro says. “It will be a great final and God willing at the end it is Sevilla bringing the silver home. It has been hard, we have beaten four very powerful teams. It hasn’t been a good season but Sevilla has a special feeling for this competition, where we’re transformed.”
