He was the darling of the City Football Group. While this increasingly widespread model of multi-ownership is attracting more and more criticism in the world of football, the Catalan team was a model of success. A club which certainly belongs to the CFG, but which retains a certain identity, with a fairly clear and ambitious project. And above all, who obtains – or obtained at this time – good results. It must be said that Girona finished the 2023/2024 season in a remarkable third place in La Liga, therefore competing in the Champions League last season.
All this, by offering a particularly attractive and attack-oriented game, posing big problems for the big names in the championship. Michel – whose future should be written at Ajax – had done an excellent job, praised by everyone on the other side of the Pyrenees. All with a fairly attractive squad, in which we found young players, sure values from La Liga and some good players unearthed from the four corners of the planet, like Savinho or Artem Dovbyk. And even if it is true that the Catalans were unable to compete in the Champions League, still causing big problems for PSG with a narrow 1-0 defeat at the very end of the match, nothing suggested relegation this season…
Growing too fast?
Especially since the Girona squad was rather friendly. On paper, at least. For example, we find Vitor Reis, a young central defender called by Carlo Ancelotti to defend the colors of Brazil at the World Cup, or the Ukrainian winger Viktor Tsygankov. Arnau Martinez, one of the best full-backs in the championship for a while now, or Azzedine Ounahi, are also players of a much higher caliber than that of a relegated club player. And the excuse of experience is clearly not valid since Girona had in its squad players with a certain background like Axel Witsel, Thomas Lemar, Alex Moreno or Daley Blind, all used to evolving under pressure and in complicated contexts.
How can we explain such a decline? Even if the squad is therefore rather correct, it should be noted that there have been a huge number of changes during the last transfer windows, with enormous instability which is never positive. There are only a few survivors left from the 2023/2024 adventure, with a group that has completely changed, and executives like Yangel Herrera or Aleix Garcia who have not been properly replaced. Michel therefore had to start from almost zero last summer, and this time, his methods did not really find acceptance among his players. From the outset, the season had started very badly anyway. While Michel’s troops had lost their first three championship matches, the local press was already reporting serious problems in the locker room. And inevitably, it weighed on the ground.
Powerless against its rivals for maintenance
Michel’s vision of football perhaps did not correspond to what a team at the bottom of the table needs, with a game perhaps a little too complex, where, to maintain themselves, the teams display a slightly more rudimentary style. There was also an element of bad luck, it must be noted, with matches that were sometimes well dominated but without final reward, not to mention injuries, like Marc-André ter Stegen, who arrived and was injured until the end of the season after his second match. The starting number 9 Vladyslav Vanat was injured at the beginning of April and missed the entire rest of this 2025/2026 financial year, although he had scored 9 goals in the league and could therefore have helped with a few valuable goals in this final La Liga sprint. Not to mention small physical glitches which handicapped key players like Daley Blind, Portu or David Lopez throughout the season.
Paradoxically, Girona has obtained good results against clubs at the top of the table, having beaten Barça or Villarreal, and hanging on to Real Madrid. But as indicated Sportit is its record against its direct rivals for maintenance which weighed down Michel’s team, with very poor results against the other clubs at the bottom of the table. The context of this season in La Liga, with a fairly homogeneous second part of the table and tougher than before, also weighed, since with the 41 points collected this year, Girona would have saved themselves last season, for example. A whole bunch of parameters which mean that, two years after playing at the Parc des Princes or at San Siro and having hosted Arsenal, Girona will challenge Gijon and Valladolid…
