Sevilla take on ‘hardest of Europa League finals’ after troubled season

“A ny other team would have let go,” Pepe Castro says, but then Sevilla Futbol Club are not any other team, not when it comes to the Europa League. It is not just that they have found a way past Manchester United and Juventus, “clubs that have four times our budget”, to reach their seventh final Europa League final that is so extraordinary, according to the club’s president, or even that they have done it in their worst season for 20 years, one in which they have had three managers and risked relegation. It is that they even tried.

When José Luis Mendilibar took over as coach in March, he came on a rescue mission, the situation at Sevilla so desperate that the sporting director hadn’t even left the scene of their latest defeat before calling. Sevilla were two points off the relegation zone, had lost three of their previous four matches and were falling apart. Mendilibar was their last throw of the dice, a man who had taken charge of more than 400 first-division games over a career that goes back 27 years but not at clubs such as this; instead, he said, he had spent his career “fighting for different things”. Survival, mostly.

Which was of course why they called, but that was not the only thing that mattered, even if it should have been. They had just about survived second-leg fightbacks from PSV Eindhoven and Fenerbahce in the Europa League but, the state they were in, there was no way they were going to be standing very much longer. Especially not when they were then drawn with Manchester United. Besides, the situation was so bad domestically that many thought they should dump Europe, more an impediment than anything else. “Sevilla could never do that,” Castro says.

Sevilla are the Europa League, their entire identity