“Sometimes football is a real bastard,” Luis García said. Seven days earlier Sevilla’s coach had warned that every game was going to be “total suffering, a heart attack”, appealing for his players to have personality even as he admitted that he too had “crapped myself alive” when the opposition attacked, fear invading every thought, terrified that the hope might have been taken from them. A week later, it was, in a way that was as unthinkable as it was somehow inevitable, with a goal that left Sevilla in their darkest place for a quarter of a century. A goal that came from a throw in the 99th minute. Or the 300,000th minute, García claimed.

Nine minutes had been added at Osasuna’s El Sadar Stadium, 19 seconds of which were left and, having led 1-0 until the 80th minute, Sevilla were now clinging to a draw. A point wasn’t much but was something when Osasuna took it. García’s exhausted players didn’t react and over by the bench the manager spun on his heel and threw his hands in the air, anger and anxiety rising inside. By the time García turned back, Osasuna’s Moi Gómez had crossed, unimpeded, and on 98.46 Alejandro Catena headed the winner. Osasuna’s coach, Alessio Lisci, went leaping up the line, with safety secured and Europe a genuine possibility; Sevilla’s crossed it, García marching on to the pitch, every step a stomp, ready to grab someone, anyone.

As El Sadar went wild García was left standing alone, eventually turning back broken, bottle thrown. The whistle went but his players didn’t. On the Sevilla bench, Kike Salas, Joaquín Oso and Isaac Romero, three academy players, just sat there, heads in hands. Djibril Sow crouched in the corner. All over the place, Sevilla players looked lost. In the stands, supporters stared through the tears. “I have a lump in my throat,” Gabriel Suazo said, struggling to get his words out. “I’ll give my life for this club.” The captain, Nemanja Gudelj, wasn’t doing much better. “It hurts, it hurts a lot,” he said.

“We’re gutted, gutted; very, very gutted,” García said. “They’re crying; they’re in there destroyed. They’re very, very hurt, sunk. When you have it in your hands, you can’t let it go: we’re playing for our lives.” Defeat left Sevilla in the relegation zone, a point from safety with five games left and a single win in 11. Title contenders in 2021 and 2022; fourth in 2020, 2021 and 2022 (so they sacked their manager), Europa League winners in 2023 (so they sacked that manager too), a Champions League team only two years ago, they haven’t been this low this late since 1999-2000. That year, they went down. Twenty-five years on, it’s a a genuine possibility again.

García has faced big challenges before – there have been promotions and attempts at survival – but this rescue mission is something else, bigger even than he imagined: “Sevilla are a giant of Spain and Europe, no one should forget that,” he said. Are? Was? Seven times Europa League winners, eight times a Champions League team, a team that only missed out on Europe twice in two decades, relegation would be a huge shock, But it wouldn’t be a huge surprise. While García complained about the added time – “when the board went up, I said: ‘Bloody hell, nine?!’ When we’re losing it’s three; when we have something to hold it’s nine” – much as he lamented his luck, and although this was cruel, there is something simpler. Look beyond the name, and Sevilla are just not very good.

At the end of García’s presentation last month, the club’s sporting director Antonio Cordón was caught muttering to him: “It’s like a wake in here.” Sevilla had just sacked Matias Almeyda, and despite there being a new man in charge, optimism was not easy to come by. Almeyda had at least connected with his players and had torn Barcelona to bits, but by then they had slipped within three points of the relegation zone. They had only won two of 13, and, the coach confided, he wasn’t sure that they would win any more.

García changed the dugout, from right to left. “Without doing anything radical, we’ll be different,” he said, and in his second game secured a victory against Atlético Madrid. But one local paper claimed “Sevilla played with fire and it was a miracle they didn’t get burnt” and, although that was a little uncharitable, there was something in it. With Diego Simeone resting players before the Copa del Rey final and the Champions League, this was pretty much an Atlético youth team, five of the starters born in 2005, two of the subs born in 2006 and only one regular in the XI. After Sevilla secured a 2-1 win with only two shots on target, García admitted his side had a “mental block” to overcome: “It’s fear, and it’s logical: I had it too,” he said. “We think they’re robots but they’re not: they’re humans, and when things aren’t working, humans take a step back. We need personality.”

That victory might have provided it and García was keen for them to assimilate reality, realise who and where they really were. But reality was being revealed to him too, each day bringing more pressures. His message hinted ever more heavily at a disconnect and each game brought new personnel, new formations. Defeat against Oviedo and Levante followed. Now they have lost to Osasuna too, and like this: in the 99th minute. No wonder fatalism and fear appear.

In four games under García, they have just three points. “Not good, but not a disaster,” he said, and they have two home games up next, with the manager appealing for the Sánchez Pizjuán to play its part. Only Oviedo and Levante have worse home records and the rumours have started already: even before the Osasuna game he had been asked about suggestions that he might be fired. “You’re really talking to me about the sack? You leave me ‘frozen’, but, OK, OK,” he replied, noting “that problems were there before I came. I have only been here three games and we have three points. That would be madness, absolute madness; total chaos.”

Welcome to Sevilla Futbol Club, where there are many managers but an internal crisis bigger than all of them. A club where José María del Nido Sr, the former president, is at war with José María del Nido Jr, the current president – and yes, they are father and son – and where the financial crisis is such that they have the second-lowest salary limit in primera; where last year they had the lowest across primera and segunda at €684,000 per week. This season they spent €250,000, while selling for €55m, building a team with whatever they could get. As Almeyda put it: “Someone from your family says ‘would you like your grandad’s trousers?’ ‘Yes please, I could use them.’”

Almeyda was the 11th different man to coach them in nine years of which one, Jorge Sampaoli, was there twice. Another, Joaquín Caparrós, has had three spells, the latest of them designed to protect the president and the board, an act of desperation and self-preservation. They sacked Julen Lopetegui, went through seven managers in three years and finished 12th, 14th, and 17th, closer to relegation every season. Even that implausible Europa League win in 2023 couldn’t hide reality, José Luis Mendilibar rescuing them in the league, too. A video emerged the following pre-season in which Mendilibar, never a man to suffer fools, sits at a table with president Del Nido Jr and vice-president José Castro. As they pompously tell him what the project has to be; he wears a look that says: this lot don’t have a clue.

Mendilibar was right. He was also sacked eight days later. Diego Alonso came, went, and didn’t win a game. Quique Sánchez Flores lasted six months and couldn’t take any more. You just knew García Pimienta was going to be sacked when they extended his contract a month after he had been signed. And so it went on, through Caparrós and Almeyda and now García, their place in the table not so much a product of cruelty or bad luck, although there is plenty of both, but a level of an almost inconceivable incompetence at the top that’s almost inconceivable, that conditions everything. This is no one-off: in 2024, Sevilla finished on 41 points. In 2025, they finished on 41 points. They have 34 points with five games to go now; they may get to 41 again, but this time, that tally is unlikely to be enough.

“We have to win next Monday, no matter what,” García said. “I’m pissed off, but that’s normal: the situation is messed up. This is the hardest challenge I’ve had. I didn’t build this team. But we need someone who pulls them along and if I bow my head now … It’s a pity: today was only a point but it would have given us a lot. I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder in my life. I’ll put everything into it. We’re in intensive care, but we can still come out of it.”