Jorge Sampaoli’s Sevilla Silence Betis to Win Spain’s Greatest Derby

RAMON SANCHEZ PIZJUAN, Seville — “The feeling in the stands is what we have to translate onto the pitch.”

If you weren’t already aware of Jorge Sampaoli’s extensive experience in international coaching, you would have suspected as much on hearing the words of introduction to the Sevilla boss’ press conference ahead of the “derbi” to end them all in Spain, against Real Betis—importantly, Sampaoli’s first meeting with the local rivals.

“Firstly,” he continued (as reported here, by AS, in Spanish), “for the importance that the Sevilla shirt has in every match and especially for what the fans and the city are feeling.” As far as chest-beating battle cries go, it was straight out of the Luiz Felipe Scolari book.

In his own, slightly less dramatic way, Sampaoli’s Betis counterpart Gustavo Poyet concurred. “This match is totally distinct, unique, and special,” he told his own press conference, given at his squad’s pre-match retreat to Jerez. It is what fans on both sides of the red-and-green divide want and need to hear.

By the time the game kicked off at 10 p.m. local time on Tuesday night, the temperature had barely dropped. Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan was hot and heavy as the home team’s famous “Himno Centenario” rang around the stands in particularly fervent voice. It’s always sung here, no matter who the visitors to Nervion are. Sampaoli’s predecessor, Unai Emery, made all his players learn the words.

“I laid down a rule that we should listen to it on the coach before every game and that all the players should also be able to sing it and understand what it means,” Emery told UEFA.com earlier this year. “It is very powerful emotionally. It transmits the values of Sevilla and generates that connection between the fans, the team and the club. Our foreign players listen and learn the whole anthem so they also have that feeling.”

The morning after #ElGranDerbi. This is the moment last night when the Betis team bus arrived at Nervión pic.twitter.com/rbM672Wvnt

— Andy Brassell (@andybrassell) 21 September 2016

That subject of buy-in and understanding the feeling in the city had been the focus of much debate locally in the buildup to the game. At least cosmetically, it’s not quite the “match of the barrio” that Sampaoli this week claimed, as the city settles down following a profound period of change for both clubs.

We went into this most Spanish derbi with two squads made up of players spanning 15 different nationalities and coached, respectively, by an Argentinian and a Uruguayan—the first time since 1989 that both teams have been led into the derbi by non-Spanish coaches, when the Argentinian Roque Olsen was in charge of Sevilla and Betis were coached by Paraguayan Cayetano Re. From Avenida de Eduardo Dato to the world, indeed.

Yet even if there’s international interest aplenty—as this columnist arrives, a photographer from a Swiss daily is …

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