NY Times · Apr 25, 2022
Villarreal’s Eye for Value Cracked the Champions League Code
A Spanish team’s run to the semifinals offers a template for how teams can thrive by turning the impatience of Europe’s giants against them.
Villarreal’s mix of academy products and smart signings is blocking Liverpool’s path to the final.Credit...Fabio Ferrari/Lapresse/LaPresse, via Associated PressA great way to understand how it is that Villarreal — a soccer team from a town of only 50,000 souls, playing in a stadium that can hold a little less than half of them — finds itself in the semifinals of the Champions League is to consider the cleaning products aisle of Spain’s leading supermarket.