The last place you'd expect to find a "footballing fairytale" is Girona. The Spanish side are among City Football Group (CFG)'s ever-increasing portfolio of clubs around the globe: 44.3% owned by CFG; another 44.3% by a group led by Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola's brother, Pere. Girona's recent successes have been propped up by that relationship and a steady flow of CFG loanees have helped them establish themselves in LaLiga for the first time in their 93-year history.
Yet this season they have gone even further thanks to a sensational early run that had them firmly in the title conversation, thrilling neutral fans in the process, before they slipped back to third place behind Real Madrid and Barcelona.
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Girona have been playing some of the best attacking football anywhere in the world this term and, with a stadium capacity just short of 15,000, seeing them live has become a privileged experience.
At the heart of it all has been Sávio (otherwise known as Savinho), a 19-year-old Brazilian winger on loan from Ligue 2 side Troyes (a club also in the CFG group) who has emerged from seemingly nowhere. Sávio has become so good, so quickly, that Man City have signed him permanently for an initial €25 million, plus a potential €15m in add-ons, this summer.
It marks a remarkable and rapid rise for a player whose stock could barely have been lower just 12 months ago.
A rare modern mystery
Raised in the countryside of Espírito Santo, Sávio helped his family on his grandparents' farm before becoming a footballer. "We grew okra, lettuce ... I drank milk and liked riding horses, but weeding in the hot sun is bad," he told ESPN Brasil recently. "Every holiday I go back there and work because it's something I enjoy."
Sávio stood out from an early age on the football pitch and his name is a tribute to ex-Brazil international winger Sávio Bortolini (who played for Real Madrid and Flamengo, among others, during his career from 1993-2010). When he moved with his family to Vitória and started playing in school, Sávio impressed enough to join the youth setup of Brazilian giants Atlético Mineiro in 2018, where he penned his first contract two years later.
Troyes signed the then-18 year old for an initial €6m from Atlético in 2022. The winger had played less than 1,000 minutes for the first team since making his senior debut in 2020, so it's no surprise that he felt like a mystery to many when he landed in Europe. But just when he had a chance to showcase his talent on a wider stage, a loan spell at PSV Eindhoven was badly interrupted by hamstring troubles and he managed just 95 Eredivisie minutes in his first European season.
The following year he was sent on loan to Girona and, asked to recount the circumstances of the Brazilian's arrival last summer, Opta Analyst's Robbie Dunne told ESPN: "Honestly, not many [in Spain] knew who he was. They [Girona] had lost Rodrigo Riquelme [who returned to Atlético after his loan spell], who played on the left wing, and it was widely accepted that whoever replaced him wouldn't be as good.
"They signed Pablo Torre [from Barcelona] on loan and he played a bit of left wing in preseason, so it felt like even Girona didn't know what they had in Sávio at the time. It was a gamble that has paid off."
In short, Sávio's move to Girona felt like a lot of the other CFG loans -- such as those of Yangel Herrera or Pablo Maffeo -- in that it was a case of rearranging pieces across the portfolio and seeing what might happen. At surface level, it was a standard transfer like so many before it. But after the 2022-23 season turned out to be such a non-event for the winger, he has caught many by surprise by making such an explosive impact.
What sets him apart?
With 11 goals and 10 assists from 41 games in all competitions, Sávio has shown himself to be one of the most productive attacking players in LaLiga this season. The confidence he exudes when manoeuvring past opposing full-backs is staggering, using a variety of moves to beat them and create space, while he looks like he's been comfortable at the elite level for years.
He is a little anachronistic in the modern game in that he's a left footer thriving on the left flank, and has played around 80% of his minutes there so far. But Sávio can also be deployed as an inverted winger from the right, which he did with regularity back in Brazil. Usually, he stays hugging the touchline, maintaining the width of the pitch and hoping to isolate his opposing full-back. Of course, with a footballing education that began in Brazil, he has got a few tricks up his sleeve, including a vicious stop-start move, but he seemingly prefers to knock the ball into space and use his pace to sprint past a defender if possible.
Sávio regularly creates space between himself and his marker, opening up opportunities to either shoot or deliver a pass, and is refreshingly unselfish in these situations -- as evidenced by the fact he's averaging only 1.38 shots per 90 minutes in LaLiga.
His impact has been so impressive that has drawn stylistic comparisons to both Real Madrid's Vinícius Jr. and Athletic Club's Nico Williams, which is high praise indeed given what they have accomplished in their careers to date. He managed 102 completed dribbles in LaLiga, and was the youngest to break the 100 barrier since a certain Lionel Messi managed 106 in 2008-09.
Indeed, Girona coach Michel knew the Catalan minnows would have a great season in LaLiga after watching Savio's first training session with the team.
"Savio is the player that has had the biggest impact," Michel said. "He is the best player I've ever coached ... The impact he's had has been amazing. I was stunned when I saw him in action in the first training session and I told [Girona sporting director] Quique Carcel that we would finish in the top eight and, look, we've done even better. We are living a dream because we have only been in the first division for four years and in the 2021-22 campaign we were in the second division."
What's next?
The big question for the summer is whether Sávio is loaned back to Girona to take part in what looks likely to be the club's first-ever Champions League campaign, or is integrated into Guardiola's squad immediately to compete with Phil Foden, Jack Grealish and Jérémy Doku for one of the two wide positions in the City XI.
Sávio could certainly provide a different profile to the City squad if he sticks around, offering the same left footed-left wing presence that Leroy Sané used to, or that Foden has on occasion since the Germany international left for Bayern Munich. From that berth he'd offer explosivity and trickery, in a way mixing the skillsets of Doku and Grealish.
Guardiola doesn't use that style of winger right now -- the closest to it is Doku, but he's usually fielded as an inverted winger from the left -- but the next tactical tweak is only ever around the corner, as he strives to freshen things up and remain unpredictable. So while it may be a little difficult to foresee his potential role now, the landscape could look completely different by August, affording Sávio a snug fit in the team.
Ultimately, however City choose to use him, the narrative around his summer move is significantly different to the one he experienced less that a year ago. Sávio is no secret now.