The Real Madrid misfit is among the goals again and looking like the player who shone so brightly in 2009-10This was the week in which Diego Costa didn’t score, Lionel Messi didn’t score, and Cristiano Ronaldo did score but apologised for it. The week in which Valladolid’s Patrick Ebert scored a belting free-kick in the 85th minute to extend Sevilla’s run without an away win to a year and a month and Rayo’s Alejandro Gálvez hit an even better one to extend Almería’s two-and-a-half-year wait for a first division victory by another week. The week in which Thibault Courtois scored an own goal to condemn Atlético Madrid to their first defeat of the season, leaving the coach Diego Simeone insisting: “I told you the league was boring: with time, you’ll see I’m right.” And the week in which no one at Barcelona scored at all … for the first time in 64 league games.It was also the week in which Pedro León scored, just as he scored on the last weekend before the international break. Back then, he got two against Betis; on Sunday lunchtime he got another one against Granada. “So what?” you might say and you might even be right. His former manager José Mourinho would agree with you, that’s for sure. When he was the Real Madrid coach, Mourinho responded to constant questions about the absence of the right-winger from his team during one press conference by sniping: “Last year he was playing for Getafe! You talk about Pedro León as if he was Zidane or Maradona.”Which, of course, he’s not but here is the thing: in week eight León did score the best goal of the season so far, a glorious and clever 50-yard free kick that flew over the goalkeeper and into the corner, and his superbly struck shot on Sunday did mean that he has scored two in a row for the first time in three and a half years. Besides, Mourinho’s point is part of the point.León joined Real Madrid from Getafe for €10m in the summer of 2010 and scored a vital late goal against Milan at San Siro in November but that was pretty much that. Signed by the then director general Jorge Valdano, not Mourinho, León recently admitted that he had felt “humiliated” at the Bernabéu. One day, Mourinho told León that even if the team plane crashed without him on it and he was the only man available, he still would not play the following week. Mostly, Mourinho was as good as his word: by the end of the season, León had played only six times and was heading back to Getafe.When León was growing up he wanted to be a fireman or a cyclist. Football was for fun. León is not his surname but the name his father gave all of his sons in honour of their grandfather. There is now an extra layer of identification too: León’s eldest brother, León León, died in a traffic accident while riding a quad bike. His father was a civil guard officer who was invalided following an ETA attack at the bus station in Bilbao. Physios suggested that he start cycling as part of the rehabilitation; Pedro and his brother Luis joined him. His younger brother, Alberto, plays fútbol sala. Pedro won regional cycling championships; Luis has won four stages at the Tour de France. Luis had fulfilled his promise with the first of those wins, so Pedro and his mates fulfilled theirs. That day they shaved off their hair.Pedro had always been different: talented but timid, a little distant at times, sensitive. A natural on the pitch, someone who still plays informal tournaments with his mates but who can appear to fit uneasily with the hyper-motivated professional game, even though he would never have made it at all without that competitive edge.When he was at Levante he would train in the morning and head back to his home town for a spot of five-a-side in the afternoon. Yet there is little aggression about him and he does not really respond to the cliched cajoling of many coaches. As one team-mate puts it, if you scream at him you won’t reach him. Fans often see him as apathetic, weak, distant. “I’m certainly not Gattusso,” he said.His coach at Valladolid, José Luis Mendilíbar, called him Mendrugo, or crust. Dolt. But while he admitted that he did not get on with “defensive” managers at Levante and Murcia, he responded at Valladolid and played well there: this was a team who for all their limitations were bold, who attacked, sometimes suicidally so. León was at the heart of it on the right wing. Skilful and fast even though he rarely appears to be sprinting, he also strikes the ball like few others; the timing and precision can at times be startling. Sold to Getafe for €2.5m, he finished 2009-10 with eight goals and nine assists, as many as Xavi Hernández and Messi, only trailing Dani Alves and Jesús Navas.When he joined Madrid he shied away from comparisons with David Beckham and Míchel but it was the comparison with Zidane that summed up his time there. He was never really a Mourinho player: the coach saw him as undisciplined, positionally untrustworthy, uncommitted and lacking edge. He was not slow to say so either, nor were Mourinho’s critics slow to recall his words. When León scored that brilliant goal against Betis a fortnight ago, it was Mourinho who was brought up yet again. The question began: “Mourinho said …” León replied softly and with a shy smile: “He also said he was the best manager in Madrid’s history, so …” Largely he has avoided saying anything but asked if he had felt humiliated at Madrid, he told Cadena Ser radio: “Yes.”For much of the Spanish media, determined to attack Mourinho and unable to let go even after he had gone, it was an opportunity. Madrid probably was a step too far for León; this was Getafe, after all, and against Betis too. But at Madrid there had been signs of his talent and the opportunities to prove himself had been few, while the style had not suited him and emotionally it had clearly been hard. He had been burned by the experience and the malaise lingered, as if he had been set back, his confidence gone. When he returned to Getafe, he did not immediately recover and there were injuries too: in his first season back, on loan, he played just 13 times.Last season, now officially a Getafe player again, there were glimpses of what he could do and his impact was shown by the way the side suffered without him: in the six competitive games he missed in January, they won only one. By the end of the season he had started 26 matches: he had racked up more shots and assists than anyone else but there was still something vulnerable about him. At the start of this season, one preview asked: “Could this be the year he is definitively reborn?” He had, Emilio Contreras wrote, “looked like the player than shone in his first season at Getafe”. But that line was written with a hint of fear and the victory over Betis seemed to sum him up: León scored two then limped off before half-time.Fortunately, it was no big deal. This weekend León scored again. He seems to be finding himself once more. Only two players have delivered more balls into the area in La Liga this season and his three goals are already as many as he got last year. Better still, when his second went in this weekend, it confirmed a 2-0 victory – Getafe’s fourth consecutive win, their fifth in six games, a run in which their only defeat was at the Bernabéu.”This run is incredible: five in six in the first division is tremendous,” said the coach Luis García, who is overseeing Getafe’s best start to a season. “Let’s enjoy this but with humility: we have three games in a week ahead.” They were already a neat, tidy side. Now they are getting goals too. Having picked up a solitary point in the opening three weeks, Getafe are one point off the Champions League places on Monday morning. “Nothing’s changed, just the results,” insisted the goalkeeper Miguel-Angel Moya.”This is about working collectively to create an environment in which the players’ talent can emerge,” García said. León is the beneficiary and so is his team, even if a little advice from Mr Wolf would not go amiss here. Getafe have beaten Granada, Betis, Espanyol, Celta and Osasuna but they still have not faced Barcelona, Atlético, Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia, Athletic or Villarreal. They are not exactly Madrid and he is not exactly Zidane. But maybe this year Pedro León can be Pedro León again.Results and talking points• Espanyol out-Atlético’d Atlético … thanks to an own goal from Courtois, who deflected a cross into the net. Espanyol were organised, deep and aggressive and Atlético, with Arda Turan on the bench, could not find a way through. So it is that just when it looked like the record would go, it survived: Real Madrid remain the only team to have started a season with nine straight wins (in 1968). Neither eight from eight became nine from nine this weekend. Atlético were beaten at Espanyol and Barcelona drew 0-0 at Osasuna. “It’s a different league now,” shouted the cover of Marca on Sunday, which at least made a change from “Hay Liga!”. They’re right too: Barcelona dropped two points but moved clear at the top. That’s the good news for culés; the bad news is that there are three teams within three points and Madrid are one victory behind. And this Saturday is (dum dum duuum …) the clásico.• If only there was some kind of book or something that told the story of it, eh?• Cough. Ahem. Shameless.• Let’s get the Willy puns out the way quickly, shall we? The Málaga goalkeeper was immense as his side lost to Madrid at the Bernabéu. It finished 2-0 but it could have been 10. Weirdly, the goals embarrassed them a little. The first was from Angel Di María, and he didn’t mean it, while the second came only in the last minute when Gareth Bale won a penalty that never was and Ronaldo scored it. He ran off and celebrated by shaking his head and waggling his finger: “Not me, not today.” It was not, he admitted, his best day and he did not really deserve the plaudits.• Speaking of puns, an early contender for tortured analogy of the week goes to AS. A photo of Luis Enrique in cycling gear was all it took for them to pedal a line, saddling the reader with a load of wheelie bad bespoke cycling puns. “Levante is the first summit in Luis Enrique’s mountain stage,” the headline ran. “Right now the Celta manager is at the back of the peloton and there are tough climbs on the horizon … he needs to move up the pack.” Etc.• Asked if there was any explanation for his team’s defeat, the Betis manager Pepe Mel responded: “Yes, football. You know, it’s a game where you have to get a ball between the posts and when you go you get a point, or a ‘goal’, and then you start again and you try to get some more ‘points’ and so it goes …”• PS Sorry about that Sevilla fans.Results: Real Madrid 2-0 Málaga; Valencia 1-2 Real Sociedad; Osasuna 0-0 Barcelona; Espanyol 1-0 Atlético; Granada 0-2 Getafe; Almería 0-1 Rayo; Betis 1-2 Elche; Valladolid 2-2 Sevilla. Monday night: Celta v Levante, Athletic v Villarreal.GetafeLa LigaEuropean club footballSid Lowetheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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