PETE JENSON: Mason Greenwood’s new club Getafe are the most unloved side in LaLiga… they lack the history of the older teams and charm of the more colourful ones

Getafe head coach Jose Bordalas has defended the club’s decision to hand Mason Greenwood a way back into football.

The 21-year-old joined the LaLiga side on loan from Manchester United, who suspended him in January 2022 over sex offence charges which were dropped seven months ago.

Greenwood did not make his Getafe debut during last night’s 2-1 defeat top Real Madrid, but Bordelas was still pressed on the club’s decision to sign him.

‘It is a very delicate situation to trivialise that issue,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows what happened and appropriate measures were taken. Everyone knows how it ended, with a non-convictory sentence.

‘He is a footballer of a very high level and arrives at Getafe with enormous enthusiasm.’

With neither the history of some of the older teams in Spain nor the charm of the more colourful ones, Getafe is probably the most unloved club in La Liga.

And it was Getafe who snapped up Manchester United outcast Greenwood on a loan deal on Friday night.

There was some affection for the ‘Blues’ when they reached a Europa League quarter-final against Bayern Munich in 2008 but they have long since stopped been the neutrals’ favourite. 

That glorious European run came playing the open, expansive football of Michael Laudrup but now, with uncompromising Jose Bordalas in charge, they are a bruising, no- nonsense outfit set up to frustrate teams and opposing coaches and cling on to top flight status.

Bordalas also had them in Europe in his first spell at the club, before he joined Valencia. He came back last season to save them from the drop and did so averaging 20 fouls a game and 35 per cent possession.

In Bordalas’s first spell Getafe regularly topped the yellow and red card charts, but his style was at least effective. Now, with their best striker, Enes Unal, out injured until next year, they are favorites to be in the relegation battle.

Locals say Getafe, on the outskirts of Madrid, is a safe place to live, with a low crime rate, and the cost of living is lower than in the Spanish capital. It is quieter and has less traffic than Madrid. Their open Alfonso Perez Coliseum Stadium rarely fills to its 16,500 capacity but if you meet a Getafe fan, then you genuinely want to shake their hand.

It is a tough life following a club which has only the 1998–99 Second Division title in the trophy cabinet and is just a 50-minute drive from the shiny, new Bernabeu, where the two teams met on Saturday, Real winning 2-1 with Jude Bellingham scoring a 95th-minute winner.

Even the club’s president, Angel Torres, is a card-carrying Madrid fan, so those from Getafe who choose to back their local side are to be admired. The fans were certainly pleased with Torres on Friday night, when they gathered to celebrate the signing of Greenwood.

But while those outside the stadium were jumping with joy, many on social media were questioning the club’s decision, especially in light of the row engulfing the Spanish women’s World Cup-winning team and the Spanish FA boss, Luis Rubiales. ‘With everything going on with the Spanish women’s team, you employ this guy. Embarrassing,’ wrote one supporter.

Perhaps that fan remembers that in 2011 Getafe produced a short 1970s-style film featuring ‘sex-mad women’, called ‘Horny Zombies of Getafe’, to support a tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign encouraging male supporters to donate sperm.