The ball fell from high, high up in the night sky: 40 or 50 yards it went, spinning and bending, coming down fast and from an awkward angle. Positioned near the touchline, the former Chile international barely moved, almost imperceptibly shifting into position, and watched it all the way onto his right foot as if guiding it there himself, a Jedi mind trick. Then he tamed it with a single, gentle touch so soft he could have been wearing slippers, directing it obediently to his left before flicking it to one of his players. All of it with the nonchalance of a man not trying.
There was a gasp, and then applause, from 50,622 people. Nice to see you again.
On the bench, Real Betis's subs and staff started to clap too. There were giggles, mouths hanging open, faces that said: bloody hell, did you just see that? Oh, they had seen alright -- and that was the manager who had just done that.
Asked afterwards about that moment, Manuel Pellegrini, Betis's 68-year-old coach, a man who hasn't played in 36 years, smiled. "Well," he said, "I had to be on the same level as the team."
It was late on Monday night and his team had just closed the first weekend of another league season with a 3-0 win over Elche. It had opened four days earlier with their neighbours Sevilla, who lost 2-1 at Osasuna, the first goal of the year headed in by Chimy Avila, he of the homemade tattoos, the wildest life story inked on his skin, and thighs the size of jamons.
It couldn't have started at a better place, and it probably couldn't have closed at a better one, too: El Sadar and the Benito Villamarin packed and alive, loud. And between that Avila goal -- just nine minutes into the 2022-23 season, the noise at El Sadar engulfing everything -- and Juanmi's beautifully taken strike a bit before 11 p.m. on Monday, a lot had happened. And a lot of it so good.
There were goals everywhere, except Barcelona and Athletic Club, which didn't make much sense and certainly didn't mean boring. After all, Athletic took 23 shots, including two that thumped off the post, and Barcelona took 21 of them. Robert Lewandowski did have the ball in the net on his debut at a Camp Nou as full as it has been for a year -- for the men's team, at least -- and it was gorgeously taken, only for it to be ruled out for offside. Seven years running he had scored on the opening night, but that was in Germany. Spain is something else, something good.
LaLiga was back and maybe it's the wait, maybe it's the miss you, but boy was it fun.
There were 49 debutants in primera, quite a lot of old faces too -- you'll never guess who got Celta Vigo's first goal of the season -- and plenty of the kind of moments that make it. "La primera en la frente," Julen Lopetegui said at the end of the opening night of the opening weekend. Roughly, it means something like: bam, right from the start, a smack in the face. And it felt like that. Not so much because of the absurdly weak penalty that he quite rightly complained about -- although he was right, having just witnessed the referee make exactly the kind of decision that just four days earlier, they had promised not to make -- but because of the whole thing. This hit you, some sensory overload.
"I'm very emotional, I feel like crying," said Aimar Oroz. A 22-year-old kid from just 10 minutes up the road making his first start for Osasuna, at El Sadar, he scored the winner from the penalty that Lopetegui moaned about -- a first match that had a wild, frantic and very fun start eventually settled from the spot. He had the nerve to take it. Not just to take it, in fact, but to take it from Avila.
"Pressure?" Oroz said afterwards, "Nah. It's just you, the ball and the goal," and now he was beaming. "I feel like a little kid," he continued, and not just because, well, he is one, standing there with a cheeky grin, not really knowing what else to say. "I slept alright last night, but I reckon I won't tonight."
