Manuel Pellegrini’s brilliant side are dreaming of Champions League football after a fourth win on the bounce
There were some people on the pitch. Some Pokémon too and some bunnies and some bears. Lots and lots of bears. Lots of goals, too. At half-time in Real Betis’s final home game of 2021, on the night when they sang and danced and hugged and finished the year in a position higher than they have finished any season since 1935, a party breaking out in Heliopolis, it started raining cuddly toys. An annual tradition now, fans had been asked to bring theirs to the ground – no bigger than 35cm please, and no batteries included – and throw them from the stands, flying through the air onto the grass below. Or into blankets waiting to catch them, as if all those stuffed minions and their mates were leaping from a burning building.
Everywhere, it was raining cats and dogs, and sheep and dinosaurs. On the night when Betis presented Alba, an eight-year-old who overcame leukaemia, as their “star signing”, 52,158 people were in the stands at the Benito Villamarín, the place packed and over 19,000 cuddlies were on the pitch, literally sack-fulls of the things, gathered up and given to kids for Christmas. Which they had to do fast: there was still half a game to play, and that turned out pretty special too. “Pfff,” Marc Bartra said. “A great night when it all came together, from a football and fan point of view, one of the best I’ve experienced here.”
