An Apotheosis in Pamplona: Osasuna End 15-Year Wait to Topple Real Madrid

Pamplona – For 15 years and 25 meetings Osasuna had waited for this, and when the moment finally arrived it required two celebrations, one false start and a VAR intervention to make it real. A 90th-minute strike from substitute Raúl García, coolly crafted after Dani Ceballos lost possession, clinched a 2-1 victory over Real Madrid at a trembling El Sadar and detonated scenes that even the stoic north-eastern night could not contain.

Goalkeeper Sergio Herrera, the unlikely conductor of the mayhem, hurdled the advertising boards twice: first when García’s initial effort was instantly cancelled by an offside flag, then 64 seconds later when referee Alejandro Quintero reversed the decision via the monitor. “Una leche,” Herrera called the wait, but the second sprint into the arms of the ultras behind his goal was pure catharsis. By the final whistle he was thumping his chest toward every stand, the last kick of the match—his own goal-kick—still descending from the Pamplona sky.

The narrative had been set earlier when Ante Budimir, earlier denied by the woodwork and a soft booking for diving, converted a VAR-awarded penalty on 38 minutes after Thibaut Courtois was adjudged to have trodden on the striker’s foot. Vinícius Júnior, greeted by Baywatch floats and bouncing beachballs in reference to Madrid’s Ballon d’Or boycott, equalised after a slaloming Federico Valverde break, but Madrid rarely looked like turning territorial possession into control. Left-winger Víctor Muñoz tormented the rusty Dani Carvajal, while Lucas Torró and Javi Galán snapped into every second ball.

When the decisive moment came it was an Osasuna replacement who provided it: Raúl Moro robbed Ceballos, slipped inside to García, and watched the 29-year-old cut inside a sliding Raúl Asencio to curl left-footed beyond Courtois. García later admitted such manoeuvres were “something I did a lot in Segunda”; on Saturday night they wrote club history.

The win lifts Osasuna to six matches unbeaten, relegation fears now replaced by European whispers. Coach Alessio Lisci, threatened by his squad with detention unless he granted two days off, obliged gladly. “I stood looking at the stands,” he said. “That’s why we like football: to make people happy.”

For Madrid, the defeat ends a streak that stretched back to a 2011 loss in the same stadium when Cristiano Ronaldo, Sergio Ramos and an embryonic Álvaro Arbeloa—now Madrid’s coach—were on the pitch. Arbeloa warned his players pre-match that El Sadar had seldom been kind to him; on the evidence of a night when VAR, ticker tape and a whirling goalkeeper converged, his assessment remains as accurate as ever.

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