According to Getafe, the campaign was a success: there was enough attention and more season tickets would have been sold. But to attract fans, you also need to perform on the field. They came from 2016, when Chairman Torres brought in the relatively unknown José Bordalás as the new trainer. Getafe was penultimate in the second division at that time.
Bordalás had a rather unimpressive CV, with mainly small clubs from the Valencia region. He was sent off at his last club Deportivo Alavés because his ideas about football would not be suitable for Primera Division.
But Torres saw in him the ideal successor to the less successful – and for Ajax fans old familiar – Juan Esnáider. The Argentinian from Atlético Madrid made a fierce tackle with two legs on Richard Witschge in 1997 after his missed penalty kick in the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
Golden move
The appointment of Bordalás turned out to be a golden move for Getafe, which, with around 20 million euros, has one of the lowest player budgets in Spain. He forged a close team of average football players, half of whom had never played at the highest level. After one season, promotion followed, followed by an eighth and fifth place in La Liga, with the Champions League missed out last season.
The tactics of Bordalás are as simple as they are successful, says El Pais journalist and Getafe expert Diego Torres: “They never stop putting pressure and they do that very far from the goal, an average of 40 meters. That requires courage and a lot of risk . When they capture the ball, a long ball immediately follows, without thinking, where the attackers dive into the right hole. “
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