The ball was in play for just four seconds during the last 11 minutes of another Madrid derby but that was enough, every emotion packed into eight touches and 100 freeze-frames on a cold Friday night across the motorways to the south of the city. The difference between triumph and disaster was a fine line painted white and a goalkeeper in green. Leganés were suddenly, unexpectedly lifted up and handed a lifeline, only to be knocked down, lifted up, knocked down, lifted up and knocked down again. Rayo Vallecano, meanwhile, were taken on the same journey in the other direction, eventually left standing, celebrating something they couldn’t imagine before and wouldn’t imagine now.
“Very mad,” the Rayo striker Sergio Camello called it. All of it: the fact they, the club who have only played European football once and thanks to fair play, had just won 1-0 and were sixth and the way they got there, how close they had been to having it taken away again, everything unfolding so fast feelings couldn’t catch up. “I can still feel the fright,” the manager Iñigo Pérez said. “You play football for years, watch it, even start coaching, and think you’ve seen it all. But this is something that’s never happened to me.” What had happened shouldn’t have, he said, an epic end his team could have avoided, but it was better this way, Augusto Batalla performing a miraculous rescue by saving a last-second penalty.
Twice.
In truth, the derby hadn’t been great until then. But now it was brilliant, VAR helping deliver the drama, a battle saved for the final scene. Rayo were a goal and a man up at Butarque after the Leganés captain Sergio González had been sent off and Pathé Ciss had found a way through to score with 12 minutes left, when Camello tried to lob Rayo’s 19th shot over Marko Dmitrovic. Had he scored, it would have been over, but he didn’t. Nor, though, did it seem to matter; this was done. The board had said five minutes more and the clock showed 92.36 – Leganés had 10 men and had only managed four shots, none on target.
There wasn’t time for anything but there was time for everything. One last ball was sent forward and, on 93.07, Darko Brasanac went down inside Rayo’s penalty area. At first it looked like a dive and the referee Alejandro Quintero González didn’t give anything. Rayo broke again, Adri Embarba having another shot blocked. But on 93.37, the referee stopped play and put his finger in his ear. The ball had gone out; the game would still be going 11 minutes and four seconds later. Rayo’s goal was about to be in the line of fire for the first time.
From the VAR room at Las Rozas, 20km round the M40, they had seen Florian Lejeune’s boot connect with Brasanac and, on 94.04, Quintero González was called to have a look, players surrounding him and pointing as he stood staring at the screen. When at last the referee had seen what they saw, he pointed to the spot. This was it, the opportunity for Leganés to get something: one opportunity, one shot that turned out to be two. Two men 12 metres apart, smiling at each other, laughing, offering a few words, trying not to crack up on the surface, trying not to crack beneath it. Miguel de la Fuente v Batalla.
De la Fuente spat, breathed in, chest heaving, took two big steps to his left, ran up and hit it, a little to Batalla’s right but central. The goalkeeper saved it, the ball coming off his palm, and bouncing up. De la Fuente jumped, headed it down and Valentin Rosier bundled over the line: 1-1. It was 97.20, almost 11pm, and Leganés had done it, “Freed From Desire” blaring over the loudspeaker, limbs everywhere.
Batalla, though, had seen someone encroach in the penalty area – “I wasn’t sure but on the bench they confirmed it,” he said – and was encouraging the referee to see it too, everything paused again. In Las Rozas, they were looking at another replay. A minute passed, then another. And then the referee was back at the screen, waving players away, his linesman playing bodyguard. “I tried to stay serene and wait for his judgement,” Pérez said afterwards, “but…”
Avoiding that fate was supposed to be the extent of Rayo’s ambitions this season. Instead, Batalla and his teammates are in the form of their lives. “Our target is survival. We will continue to be prudent until the maths say otherwise. Then I might be a little less prudent, but I will never be imprudent,” Pérez said; he also called Rayo’s position “purely anecdotal”, only it’s not. “Europe is for other teams, it’s not for us,” the coach said but it’s his team, the smallest of all, sitting sixth, among the most dynamic, exciting sides in La Liga, a continuity of the identity that Pérez embraced while assistant to Andoni Iraola. A fortnight ago the captain Valentín dared mention Europe. Last week, two late goals from Randy Nteka – as many in three minutes as he had scored in three years – brought victory over Girona. And now they had their third win in four, extending their unbeaten run to eight, thanks to a penalty saved on 97.19 and again on 104.01, details that can feel like fate falling their way.
As emotions unravelled during a weird and wild ending to the other Madrid derby, anything seemed possible. Asked if they could dream, the Rayo midfielder Isi said: “I’ve been dreaming my whole life, so why not?” After all, they had just been shot at twice, unloaded upon from point-blank range and somehow survived, Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield standing there unscathed, wondering how the hell it had happened. The answer was on the line, where Batalla had smiled like a man who knew. “It went well when it could have gone badly,” Pérez said. “We shouldn’t have to depend on Augusto, but I’m happy that we could.”
