Agony and ecstasy in La Liga after a survival battle for the ages | Sid Lowe

At the end of a ‘crazy, crazy day’, Elche were safe. But opponents, Girona, were down with Mallorca and Oviedo

Eder Sarabia wasn’t out there to see the tightest, tensest battle there has ever been end with liberation at last, but his mum and dad were and he wasn’t far away. Suspended for the final night of a season like no other, Elche’s coach was hidden down in the dressing room instead, watching the game that he knew was “us or them” on a TV set perched precariously upon a metal crate. There, as staff ran in and out delivering messages until it was his turn to set off on a sprint, he saw the match that defined five teams’ fate finish 1-1. Mobile in hand, alerts beeping, most of all he saw suffering. “Terrible, terrible, terrible,” he called it later, but by then at least it was done. Elche were safe. Their opponents, Girona, were down. Real Mallorca, like Real Oviedo, were going with them.

“Crazy, crazy day, crazy match, a lot of emotions: this league was really crazy,” Sarabia said. He had spent much of it surrounded by clothes on hooks and flags taped to walls; like everyone else, he had also spent it, he said, “on the edge of the precipice”. From the visitors’ dressing room at Montilivi, he had seen Álvaro Rodríguez score the kind of goal that wins cups in cartoons, tearfully dedicating it to his late dad, and Arnau Martínez equalise. He had seen cameras zoom in on his parents in the stands and wondered how Manu, a former footballer who doesn’t so much watch games as broadcast them, looked so calm when they were a goal from losing it all. He had seen Thomas Lemar hit Elche’s bar, “+7” appear on the screen, and his goalkeeper catch a cross on 95.55, Matías Dituro triumphantly holding the ball like Rafiki on Pride Rock, but it still wasn’t over.

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