Seville to A Coruña is most of a country
The furthest trip in these rows came three days before the biggest home game, and that is worth sitting with. On the sixteenth of September this team played at the Estadio Abanca-Riazor, in A Coruña, up in the north-west corner of Spain in Galicia, and won one-nil. A Coruña is about as far from Seville as the league goes without leaving the country — tip to tip, coast to coast — and the reward for the longest coach ride of the month was three points, a clean sheet, and three days to get back south for FC Barcelona. Rewind to August and the shape of the run is easy to miss in the results. The fifteenth of August, home to Rayo Vallecano, two-one: a win, at home, the plain kind. The twenty-second, away to Athletic Club — which means Bilbao, which means the north coast again — and this one finished with a three-one win for the visitors: a very good day out. The sixth of September, away to Espanyol: one-one, a first draw in these rows this season, played in the Barcelona corner of the map. The eleventh, home to Valencia, one-nil. The sixteenth, A Coruña, one-nil again. The nineteenth, FC Barcelona at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, one-three, and the week ended with the loudest fixture in the ledger going the wrong way. Look at the away days alone and notice where the miles have gone: Bilbao in the Basque Country, the Barcelona area for Espanyol, and Galicia for A Coruña. Three trips, all of them into the top half of the map, all of them back before the tapas gets cold in Seville. Nobody has been sent to a neighbouring town yet. It is the kind of autumn where the fixture computer is testing the squad's legs as much as anything, and the rows so far say the legs are fine: of the three away days here, two came back with wins and one with a draw. By the numbers — La Liga: 5th · 7 played · 4-1-2 · 10-9 · 13 pts · form LDWWL. All data from ScoreCrowd's match records, retrieved 24 September 2026. The line above is La Liga only; the competitions list holds La Liga and Club Friendlies 3. FC Barcelona keeps turning up in this club's file like a recurring dream. The fifth of October 2025: four-one at home, and one of the afternoons this ground exists for. The fifteenth of March 2026: away at FC Barcelona, two-five. The nineteenth of September 2026: one-three at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán. Three meetings in these rows, and the balance shifting the wrong way by the third. That September match is the only row here with the venue given as the Pizjuán — the other home rows leave the ground unnamed — so the file quite literally names the stage the moment the biggest show comes to town. There is a longer story in the tail of last season too. Late April was grim: nil-two away at Levante on the twenty-third and one-two away at Osasuna on the twenty-sixth, three days apart, two long trips, two defeats. May then flipped it entirely — one-nil at home to Real Sociedad, two-one at home to Espanyol, and a three-two away at Villarreal on the thirteenth that looks on the scoreline like an absolute mess of a football match and an excellent day. The last row of that season in the file is Real Madrid visiting on the seventeenth of May and leaving with the points, one-nil. Which is roughly how the month has felt: the long trips handled, one loud home defeat, and the numbers below doing the counting. What comes next is not in the data here yet — just the league and whatever else lands in the file. If the away days keep returning three points from the far corners of the map, this is a fine place to stand. If the long trips stop paying, at least the fixtures have stopped hiding it.