COLUMN: What will be left of Girona next season? The rocky rebuild awaiting Michel and Quique Carcel | OneFootball

It’s been an absurdly successful year for Girona. This past weekend, they put the cherry on top of their historic league run by also pushing their striker, Artem Dovbyk, towards the top of La Liga’s goal-scoring table. It’s an individual award that crowns a remarkable collective achievement.

The influence of City Football Group (CFG) understandably takes a fair bit of romanticism away from Girona’s feat. However, it would also be inaccurate and exceedingly cynical of us to ascribe all of Girona’s success this season to CFG.

As a newly promoted side, Girona faced the challenge of operating with one of the five lowest revenues and wage bills in La Liga during the 2022/23 season. To put this into perspective, Real Madrid’s wage bill was ten times higher, and their revenue was fourteen times higher. Typically, a team with such financials would be battling to avoid relegation. However, the influence and scouting network of CFG allowed Girona to punch above their weight and finish the season in tenth place. In the final two months of competition, they were even in contention to qualify for European competitions.

While CFG’s influence easily explains how Girona went from a relegation candidate to a solid midtable team, the jump from midtable to Champions League spots exceeds any reasonable expectation anyone could have had at the beginning of this season. In my opinion, the credit for that particular jump primarily goes to Michel and his players.

While Girona has access to attractive young talents who wouldn’t be there without CFG’s pull (Viktor Tsygankov, Dovbyk, Savio, Yan Couto), their starting XI is mostly composed of player misfits and discards.

Paulo Gazzaniga was the third-choice goalkeeper in a Fulham side that had just been promoted to the Premier League. Miguel Gutierrez, Daley Blind, and Eric Garcia were considered surplus to requirements in their respective superclubs (Real Madrid, Bayern, and Barcelona). Aleix Garcia and Yangel Herrera may have been on Manchester City’s payroll at some point but their growth stagnated, and they were loaned from one bottom-half team to another until City finally transferred them permanently to Girona. Before arriving in Girona, Ivan Martin had barely any minutes in the top flight of Spanish football. No one, not even the people who shrewdly assembled this undervalued group of players, could imagine that they would reach the heights they did this year.

Amidst the celebrations of the team and their community, one could already notice nostalgia and anxiety for next season lurking around. “Having to put the clock back to zero tomorrow is a pity,” Michel said in the post-game interview. “There are people who won’t be here next year, who we may go a long time without seeing again.”

Let’s do a quick review of Girona’s starting XI to see who might leave this summer. Real Madrid still owns 50% of Gutierrez’s rights. They could purchase back the other half if they want the player to rejoin their squad, or even to resell him for further profit. Eric will go back to Barcelona this summer. Aleix is heavily rumoured to be moving to Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen. Couto and Savio are finishing their loan spells (technically Savio is being bought from Troyes, but that works us into a web for another article) and heading to their parent club, Manchester City. And considering that Girona might want to downplay some of their CFG connection as they head into UEFA competitions next season, it seems unlikely that the Brazilian pair will be loaned back to Girona. There will surely be big offers for Dovbyk, the newly-crowned Pichichi. In summary, Girona could easily lose over half their starting XI over the summer.

Last summer, Girona also lost fundamental players in Santiago Bueno, Oriol Romeu, and Taty Castellanos, yet sporting director Quique Carcel and his scouting team managed to find appropriate replacements that allowed Michel to rebuild the team and make it even stronger. They will have to repeat a similar feat this summer.

The fact that Michel is staying another year in Girona certainly helps. For two years in a row, he has built a rich offensive system that makes the most of his squad talent despite all the turnover, and at this point, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if he did it again.

Michel has used a very different tactical recipe than other coaches and clubs who were promoted to La Liga. In the past five years, the typical La Liga survival blueprint focused on directness in possession, a passive but compact structure out of possession, time-wasting, and interrupting play via small fouls.

Míchel went the opposite way. He wanted his team to be richer in possession, knowing when to keep the ball for longer periods of time and when to go direct. Instead of being passive out of possession, Michel wanted his team to press more aggressively. Meanwhile, Girona’s ability to keep possession also improved their pressing right after losing the ball (a.k.a. counter-pressing). The one caveat here is that Michel could use a more expansive approach because CFG’s network and resources allowed Girona to have more player talent than a club of their resources normally could.

On that note, I may have spent the first part of this article downplaying CFG’s role in Girona’s success, but they are, alongside Michel, the other pillar that increases Girona’s chances of success next season. CFG must change some of its relationship with Girona to avoid unwanted attention from UEFA’s regulators. They must be more careful about the transfers between other CFG clubs and Girona, and there might be some boardroom changes, too.

However, despite these changes, there’s only so much regulators can do (or are willing to do), and Girona will continue to reap rewards and advantages from CFG. Just today, the club announced that Etihad Airways, Manchester City’s main commercial sponsor alongside Puma, will become Girona’s main sponsor for the next three years. This deal will surely fuel some much-needed spending to reinforce the squad ahead of next season.

Even with Michel’s systems, the additional income from the Champions League, and CFG benefits, Girona will have a very tricky summer and season. Richer teams than Girona have struggled to compete in both domestic and European arenas, and Girona will have to do this while also rebuilding its squad. Many decisions, from the players to the coach to the front office, must go right so Girona can successfully compete on all fronts, and it would be completely normal if that didn’t happen.

It might sound defeatist when Carcel says that next year, the main objective is to stay in the first division, but Girona cannot let the joys of Europe get in the way of their long-term stability. In the last two years, the efforts of Carcel and Michel to keep expectations low also helped relieve pressure on the players so they could perform at their best. So it makes sense that the pair might want to do the same for next season.