‘Why can’t we win there?’: Leganés bask in glory of victory at Barcelona | Sid Lowe
Borja Jiménez’s side is packed with players who have seen it all, but they had never beaten Barça before Sunday
“Today is a day to talk about my boys,” the Leganés coach Borja Jiménez said. About Miguel de la Fuente, the striker that played two months with a torn meniscus, and Renato Tapia, the Peru captain who missed the Copa América because he had no team and no insurance. About Yvan Neyou, the midfielder who faced two Simeones in one day and didn’t know, unaware that Giuliano was Diego’s son because “I don’t watch much football”. About Munir El Haddadi, who’s scored for a record seven La Liga clubs. And about the rest of them: Dani Raba, Diego García and Javi Hernandez, who was once at the best club on earth and on Sunday played for the team his captain says “will never be forgotten now”.
It was a day to talk about Matija Nastasic and Óscar Rodríguez, Jorge Sáenz and Darko Brasanac, the whole Leganés side, even if most people were talking about the team they beat. About Seydouba Cissé, who grew up in Guinea sharing boots with his best mate, a half each played barefoot, and whose dad told him to be a teacher because this would never be a career; the kid who cried at the embassy gates, waited three months for the papers to get to Spain and three years to see his mum again once he had. Whose then-agent, Ilaix Moriba’s dad, told him he had a team in Madrid and for one, brief moment he thought about that team, only for it to be this one instead, and who is happy about that now. And how could he not be?
