“Liberation,” the goalscorer Enes Unal called it. On Sunday, they defeated Real Madrid 1-0 at the Coliseum, the afternoon spent singing in the sun, welcoming in the new year. That day, Getafe had no points and were bottom. Getafe made a motivational video, all dramatic music and headlines, drawing on Palace’s experience to declare: “When results don’t come … when you try but don’t succeed … history shows it’s still possible.”Īndros Townsend moves in mysterious ways. In the eighth, they defeated Chelsea and eventually finished 11th. Seven weeks into the 2017-2018 season, Crystal Palace had lost all seven games. Not long ago there was a team in south London that were even worse and somehow they survived, rescued by Roy Hodgson. “Anxiety is inevitable.” No one had ever started a top-flight season as badly, after all. “You get the feeling you’ve seen this film before,” Míchel González, their then-manager, had said, and it didn’t have a happy ending. Seven games in, they had lost all seven, already adrift at the bottom. “One point would give us life,” the striker Jaime Mata insisted, but their vital signs were fading fast, each defeat crueller and more inevitable than the last. They were also pointless and you can insert your own joke here. Which might sound a bit weird, but while there’s no sign of the Messiah they did have Fosu-Mensah, and Getafe were desperate. Like many rituals, it doesn’t always work, but you’ve got to have something to turn to: some source of solace or inspiration, even if it’s not so much Papa Francisco as Pape Souaré, more Delaney than divine.Īnd so it was that Getafe turned to Crystal Palace. Meanwhile, up in A Coruña, Deportivo have been known to cast a pagan’s spell,: “Beelzebub’s fire, burning corpses and farts from infernal bottoms” thrown into a bubbling cauldron. Fifteen years later, Jorge became Pope Francis. His name was Jorge, a fan who loved his team and prayed with them he was also a jinx, Basile said. Coco Basile tells of the priest he kicked out of the San Lorenzo dressing room. Some turn to God, others turn their back on Him. True story, and when it comes to football you’ll try anything. The first time, before the 1986 World Cup, he asked for them to be champions when he went back four years later, he thought that would be pushing it, so requested runners-up. And Raúl Madero, the Argentinian national team doctor, twice visited the wailing wall. In 2009 the Espanyol manager Mauricio Pochettino hiked to Montserrat to visit the black virgin, enlisting her help in avoiding relegation, salvation delivered soon after. G iovanni Trapattoni carried a bottle of holy water with him, blessed by the sister who actually was his sister.