Away from the swank and swagger of Real and Atletico, the boys from the barrio are back in La Liga punching above their weight again.

Now Gareth Bale has retired there’s no hope of seeing him in the lightning stripe kit. Perhaps he’ll buy them!

Anyway, after thumping Real Madrid in November this was a good test of whether Rayo could come up with another statement win against the mercurial San Sebastian side who were quite a long way back in third behind Real and Barcelona.

Vallecas

Three miles south-east of the swish centre Vallecas repays a wander to soak up the surroundings and get a feel for what this steeped-in-the-community side represents.

Walk out from the centre – give yourself a while to do that – or just jump on the Metro and get off at Portazgo.

The above street art creations were up an alley not far from the ground, and give a flavour of area which has changed a little since my previous visit, Covid having restricted the opportunities to come over.

The Bukanero ultras’ windowless home near the ground has been turned into homes and they now congregate in the Mercado Numancia about 150 yards from the ground, to which they marched about 20 minutes from the ground. Literally hundreds of people were thronged outside the market.

The club has even bothered to primp up the Portazgo tube side with a bit of lippy. Some fancy new lightning logos adorn the doors and, inside, bright red portable cabins (see top of the picture below) provide respectable loos.

For the other sides of the stadium, ahem, well they’re still a tip and little appears to have been done. One homeless guy appears to live under the Fondo terrace behind the goal and his sleeping area was protected by two barriers.

In fact the one end will never improve. As building anything will require knocking down a tower block. Maybe Atletico can offer a ground share, heh, heh.

The match

Under a beautiful January sun – and with most games in Britain off – what a place to find yourself.

For home fans, there wasn’t much to get excited about. Rayo striker Camello fluffed an early opportunity to get a shot on target.

Unai Lopez was beaten to a midfield ball in his own half – he howled and went down for about two minutes – to set up a breakaway counter attack that led to Norwegian international Alexander Sorloth being fed and slipping it under Dmitrievksi for the visitors’ first goal after 15 minutes. After giving the goal, the ref was having none of the Rayo protests and it stood. Looked fair enough.

A slickly executed strike, you can see how Real Sociedad managed to beat Manchester United in Europe last year. Counter-attack specialists.

Thirty six minutes and a pretty dud corner got deflected across the face of the goal and Barrenetxea happened to be at the far post to pop it in. Could hardly have missed and that was it – no way were Rayo going to come back from that.

Unai Lopez was pulled off at half time and from the Rayo fans point of view – probably because they seem to get on with the opposition fans – the second half was a fairly tame effort.

All we could do was time travel – relish the refreshing taste of no-frills 20th century football in a crumbling wreck while being martialled by machine-gun toting policemen.

The good old days!