Europe’s top leagues have passed their halfway points, which means the numbers are settling down. One team stands out for doing things completely their own way.
Getafe are one of five teams from Madrid who play in La Liga, Spain’s top division. They’ve spent 20 of the last 21 seasons in La Liga, bouncing back from their 2015-16 relegation season to be mainstays in the top flight.
Much of their recent defiance can be traced to Jose Bordalas, the manager who brought them back into the top division before leading them to three consecutive top-half finishes and a run to the last 16 of the Europa League in 2020.
He left in 2021 to manage Valencia, before returning and saving Getafe from free fall just over a year later, helping them accumulate 16 points in the final 11 games of the season. This season, the team are still fighting, gritty as ever, and unique.
They are the only side in Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues yet to reach 5,000 passes this season.
They are the only team with a passing accuracy below 70 per cent, having completed just 518 in their defensive third. For context, seven sides in the English Premier League have made over four times that number.
They have committed the most fouls across the big five leagues this season — they were also top of that metric last campaign, as they were the season before.
They’ve contested 889 aerial duels, 112 more than any other side.
Their figure of 74 throw-ins into the penalty area is — you guessed it — also the highest, and by quite some distance.
Getafe’s style of football is direct, physical and difficult to watch, unapologetically so. It is not designed to please, but to frustrate, exploiting the weaknesses of La Liga’s richer sides who idolise possession and passing (Getafe’s salary cap is the fifth-smallest of the division’s 20 sides, dwarfed by the spending Barcelona and Real Madrid are permitted).
Getafe are the joint-lowest scorers in La Liga, but only Atletico Madrid and Real Sociedad have a better defensive record this term. Their 1-1 draw with Barcelona last weekend made it five years unbeaten against the Catalan giants at the Estadio Coliseum.
Bordalas divides opinion — the most stubborn dissenter in a country that prides itself on intricate, possession-based football — but no one has consistently levelled the playing field quite like him. For that, he perhaps deserves more credit than comes his way.
Getafe’s unfashionable approach is nothing new, but old debates were reignited this month as having scored in the second minute, they ground out a 1-0 win against fourth-tier Pontevedra in the Copa del Rey. Bordalas’ side had just 16 per cent of the ball, committed 16 fouls and saw out the game with nine men.
Even before any dismissals, the game plan was clear: stay compact in a 4-4-2, drop the wide into a back six when required (as seen below), and defend their early lead.
While an extreme case, Getafe’s defensive pragmatism always makes them a nightmare to play through.
Starting from the front, Bordalas’ most trusted centre-forward this season isn’t really a forward at all.
Having lost talisman Enes Unal to Bournemouth last year, the club supplemented the loan arrivals of Alvaro Rodriguez and Bertug Yildirim with a €500,000 (£400,000/$500,000) investment in 21-year-old Christantus Uche, a defensive midfielder with a season’s experience in the Spanish third-tier. He scored the equaliser on his debut away at Athletic Club and has led the line since, completing more defensive recoveries than any other frontman in La Liga this season.
The midfield is patrolled by the hard-working duo of Luis Milla — arguably Getafe’s most gifted technical player — and Mauro Arambarri. Converted centre-back Djene, into his eighth season at the club, has held down a destructive holding role in front of the defence.
Try to go over Getafe and their towering defenders come to the fore — only one La Liga centre-back has won more aerial duels than Paraguayan Omar Alderete this campaign. Behind him, goalkeeper David Soria has prevented around 20 goals more than expected based on the quality of shots faced across his Getafe career, statistically over-performing in each of his seven seasons at the club. On the rare occasions that the defensive line is breached, he is another formidable obstacle.
David “Air” Soria. 🧤#GetafeBarça pic.twitter.com/OS06B30gqm
— LALIGA English (@LaLigaEN) January 18, 2025
It won’t be a surprise to hear that Getafe don’t mess around with the ball at their feet, either.
The below graphic compares the direct speed — or how quickly teams move the ball towards the opposition goal line — with the average number of passes per team sequence, showing Getafe to be outliers in both metrics.
This season, they have completed just seven ‘build-up attacks’ (uninterrupted sequences of more than 10 passes that result in a shot or a touch in the opposition box). Manchester City, by contrast, have strung together 170 such passages of play.
Getafe haven’t always been so goal-shy. They were quite the viewing experience with the heavy-hitting Unal at the top of the side.
Even Borja Mayoral, their top scorer with 15 goals in La Liga last season, has only made one league appearance since the start of October due to injury. An over-reliance on long passes into physical-yet-unproven forwards has contributed to their poorer-than-usual form this time around. Uche, Yildirim, and Rodriguez have contested more aerial duels between them (340) this season than both Real Madrid (314) and Girona (332) have as entire teams.
The Athletic’s team style wheel illustrates the simplicity of their attacking approach, with a rating of 1/99 for both ‘Circulate’ and ‘Central progression’ — pointing to a side that go long and cross often.
Getafe’s intensity and high-line scores are rightly high, an extremely hard-working side who aren’t afraid to take risks and harry opposition players upfield. Former Barcelona coach Xavi called Bordalas’s side “brave” last February, pointing to their ability to press high and nick points against high-quality sides.
Here they are against Barcelona last weekend, for example, looking to squeeze the space as a long goal kick sails into the opposition half.
Ronald Araujo wins the header on this occasion, but Getafe quickly reset and launch another pass forward, with the back four again squeezing up and helping the team apply pressure on Jules Kounde’s touch.
Uche rushes forward, backed up by Milla and winger Coba da Costa, and manages to race downfield and get a shot away. It’s something that all 10 outfield players are prepared to do tirelessly, a testament to the defensive appetite and grit that Bordalas has instilled into his team.
Of course, there are darker elements to Bordalas’ approach, with excessive time-wasting, heavy challenges and plenty of needle at the heart of every Getafe game.
There have been high-profile disagreements between the 60-year-old and opposition managers and players, the most bitter feud spanning almost a decade with Quique Setien.
In 2013, when Bordalas’s Alcorcon did the league double over Setien’s Lugo, the latter said that it “hurts” to watch his opposite number’s team. Years later, when Setien was in charge of Real Betis and they drew against Getafe, he called his opponents “shameful”, describing how their physical style made his “blood boil”.
Bordalas, however, is well accustomed to defending his ways. After Inaki Williams complained about Getafe’s time-wasting to the media, Bordalas called his team “soldiers” days later, signing off with his signature catchphrase.
“We work for our club and our fans,” he said. “I respect the opinions of others, but I want to ask our people not to take any notice of these comments. Instead, they should analyse what this team does, how honourable, competitive and honest they are, and understand that a team like Getafe are trying to beat teams with a much bigger budget than them.
“But this is football. It’s what I say to my players: This is football, papa…”
¡𝗘𝘀𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝘂́𝘁𝗯𝗼𝗹, 𝗣𝗔𝗣𝗔́! 🫡 pic.twitter.com/8T0eAl3mI3
— Getafe C.F. (@GetafeCF) September 29, 2023
Bordalas can be spiky and sneering. His team can and do overstep the line. But this is a manager who has taken a club from the second tier to the Europa League in under three seasons. Despite the challenges of managing a club with a modest budget, he keeps them above water — they are 16th at the moment.
You get a feeling that he quite enjoys playing the pantomime villain, and won’t be changing for anyone anytime soon.
(Top photo: Getafe earlier this season; by Angel Martinez via Getty Images)
