Portu’s brilliant burst seals Girona’s top-four fairytale in the perfect way |

Cristian Portugués Manzanera was lying on the physio’s bench, pissed off, his manager pointing at him. It was the morning of the best day of their lives and Miguel Sanchez Muñoz, Michel II of Vallecas, Prince of all Girona, had just named the team that would go down in history. This time, Yan Couto wasn’t in it and he wasn’t happy either, so the coach took him aside and explained. Which is when the Brazilian saw his teammate getting treatment. “Look at Portu,” Michel insisted, “he scores goals and I never start him. He says: ‘You’re sinking me, but OK, I’ll just go out and score again.’”

And so it was.

“If you wanted to write a film script telling how Girona made it to the Champions League, it would be Portu’s goal,” Michel said hours later when they had been there, done that and got the T-shirts, starry football on the front, all their names on the back. When the unthinkable had happened and the team that hadn’t even been back in La Liga for two full years reached the biggest league of them all. Zadok the Priest blasting out at the place with the scaffolding stands and room for only 14,624 people. It was silly really, but that’s sport.

There were 25 minutes left, second against third in Week 34, and Girona were losing 2-1. This time Barcelona were “far superior”, the coach admitted, while his own team were “very bad”. Something had to be done, so he turned to Portu and Couto, the men he had left out now standing there the side of the pitch at Montilivi together, history calling, as David López and Viktor Tsygankov headed off in the other direction. Twenty-eight seconds later, Girona were level. Two minutes and 22 seconds after that, they led. Within 10 minutes, it was 4-2. “This is incredible,” Michel said.

It had all happened so fast. Slumping into the bench frustrated, López hardly had time to finish throwing his top and spitting something about a prostitute mother and the consecrated bread when Sergi Roberto’s wayward back-pass released Artem Dovbyk. Portu had entered the fray on 64.10; now, bombing up the right, receiving the Ukrainian’s pass, his shot crossed the line on 64.38. It was his first touch, standing there kissing the badge, opening his arms and welcoming them all in. He got his second on 66.29, and his third on 66.32, setting up Miguel Gutiérrez. He had been on the pitch for 142 seconds, but it was enough. Three touches, one goal, one assist, and one Champions League place secured.

Which was mad enough but that wasn’t the script Michel wrote, and it wasn’t done yet. On 71.05, Portu brilliantly set up Yangel Herrera, only for Marc-André ter Stegen to make a sensational save. And then, on 74.00, nine minutes and 50 seconds after coming on, he scored a goal so absurd, so ridiculous, that his manager claimed it represented everything they wanted to be, which is mighty ambitious. It was, the coach said, a goal “Portu alone imagined”, and he still had to execute it,…