Sevilla’s slump to Barça showcases a sense of ambition gone awry

Captain Ivan Rakitic gathered his men and turned to the north. A couple of hours earlier, a banner had been hung across that end declaring “unity makes strength”, their version of the Marseillaise thundering round, and they were still singing in there now. Sevilla’s exhausted players stood before the fans, all those swirling flags, and listened. It was 11 o’clock and it was loud but the lyrics weren’t the same now and they hadn’t come to celebrate; they had come to apologise. “We had to,” Rakitic said. They had been beaten again, this time by Barcelona. Four weeks into the season and they have a single point, a crisis coming.

As the final minutes of a 3-0 defeat played out on Saturday night, the game long since lost, Sevilla’s coach Julen Lopetegui had stood on the touchline, blinking into the lights. Now, instead of heading down the tunnel out of there, his players stood on the pitch, silently facing the music. Suso bowed slightly, sorry. Hands were held up, palms together. They were there for some time, well after Barcelona had gone. The sporting director joined them, eventually guiding them to the dressing room. In the north end, the song appealed for testicular fortitude; in the other three stands, to where the players had turned next, it was different.

There had been moments, fault lines showing during the match, and the final whistle was met with whistles of their own from the fans. Behind Lopetegui’s bench, some turned to the directors’ box shouting “Out! Out! Out!” and later a group gathered by the gates chanting that they wanted the president José Castro gone. Inside, it sounded like there were calls for Lopetegui to leave too. By the end, many of the 40,257 had already departed, but that didn’t stop the