Excellent Elche have Real Madrid on ropes but rue Bellingham’s gut punch | Sid Lowe

“It sounds a little crazy,” David Affengruber said but it didn’t sound crazy at all, not to anyone who had actually been watching. “We only come into this league this year and we’re a little bit disappointed to get a point against Real Madrid,” Elche’s Austrian centre-back concluded, standing at the side of the pitch where, Sunday’s game at the Estadio Martínez Valero finally over, a handful of kids and Endrick were now allowed to run about a bit. It was late and the stands had emptied, 31,024 people heading out the gates and into the night, but he was still in kit and sliders. Together, they’d had a lot of fun yet there was “frustration” too, he said.

Which was one way of putting it, as calmly understated as his play, but there were others. And if that was like him, this was like his coach, rarely one to hold back. A little bit disappointed How about bloody annoyed? Eder Sarabia had just watched his side, runners-up in segunda last season, score as many in one night as Madrid had allowed in five; seen a team who hadn’t won since September and a club who hadn’t won against Madrid since the 1970s get a 2-2 draw against league leaders who had only dropped points twice; and witnessed his men match a monster with a budget 19 times bigger, subs more expensive than all of Elche’s players ever, and a left-back whose cost could cover his entire club for a year. But was he happy?

“No,” Sarabia replied. “No, I’m not happy. I’m not happy at all. I just told the players that I’m pissed off. And now that I have had a look at the plays, I’m even more pissed off.”

Because after a result like this the usual headline says “Elche hold Madrid” but Elche hadn’t held Madrid at all, Sarabia’s sense of injustice not limited to the officials. Instead, they had let it slip. Twice they had led; twice Xabi Alonso’s side had equalised, both of them scrappy, scrambled finishes from dead balls. The first, via a corner on 78 minutes, had been assisted by Jude Bellingham’s arm and scored by Dean Huijsen. The second from a free-kick that wasn’t a foul in the first place, blown as Elche were breaking in search of a third, had seen Vinícius run into Iñaki Peña, the ball escape across the line, Kylian Mbappé pull it back and Bellingham score in the 87th, while the goalkeeper, unable to react, was left lying there with a bloody nose.

Cotton wedged in his nostril, Peña initially said it was just one of those things afterwards, part of the game, but his coach insisted he would change his mind when he saw the replay, which pretty much guaranteed that he would do exactly that, the story a little different by the time the goalkeeper turned up in the press room. As for Sarabia, he was furious: the foul was “absolutely clear, absolutely clear … and that’s what VAR is for,” he said. Which was when he stopped and said something more important: “I don’t want to talk about the referee; I want to talk about the great game from my team.”

To which of course the obvious response here is: ‘Yeah, good luck with that one,’ what with just about everyone more interested in controversy and crisis, in Alonso’s team and not his. But Sarabia was right, and actually: let’s.

When Alonso was asked for an explanation he said “football”, and Elche played all of it. Madrid were dreadful, it is true, but they were superb, the tone set by Álvaro Núñez dribbling out from his own goal-line after 10 minutes and seen in Peña nonchalantly curling a pass beyond Vinícius, feeling none of the nerves fans do. It was there in the high press that gave Rafa Mir the first of two brilliant chances, both saved by Thibaut Courtois, and the bravery that underlined everything they did. It was there in André Silva alone in the area, another opportunity lost, and in the half-time whistle going at 0-0 with Elche feeling they could have been a couple up – even if they could have been a couple down too, Peña making two saves from Mbappé. And it was certainly there in the final whistle going at 2-2, history made a little unhappily.

It was there in them reacting to Madrid’s substitutions – Fede Valverde, Vinícius and Eduardo Camavinga – and the first equaliser on 77 minutes not by building a wall and defending desperately but keeping the ball. Going back for more too, Álvaro Rodríguez running at the defence, turning Raúl Asencio left and right and beating Courtois from 20 yards. Above all, it had been shown in the opening goal: 22 passes, the second-longest goalscoring sequence this season and the longest against Madrid in almost a decade, concluded with a gorgeous back-heel from Germán Valera and Aleix Feibas nudging in. “An extraordinary goal; how we played out, created overloads, applied pause, set it up and finished,” in Sarabia’s words, it was a portrait of Elche’s play, and that was the point. This was no one-off; it was everything they are supposed to be. Which isn’t the way a newly promoted team are supposed to be.

Sarabia was Quique Setién’s assistant at Las Palmas, Real Betis and most famously at Barcelona, where his bullishness wasn’t always well received. The son of former Athletic Club striker Manu Sarabia – he and Alonso’s fathers played against each other back in 1979 – Eder had run the fruit counter at the supermarket, studied the music and engineering, is a cycling obsessive who rides everywhere and reached tercera as a player for Arenas de Getxo and SD Leioa. But he always knew he wanted to be a coach. He also knew how he wanted to coach, what he wanted his team to be like. And that was like this.

It didn’t matter that he was at Andorra in Segunda B or at Elche in segunda, his team was going to play. Having won promotion at Elche, as he had at Andorra, they were going to play in primera too. In the simplest terms, the way Sarabia puts it the idea is: “When we haven’t got the ball we want it back and when we have we want to know what for.”

When Elche secured promotion Sarabia started watching top-flight teams, attention trained particularly on those they could learn from: Girona, Rayo, Celta, Barcelona. One of the conclusions, that the quality of players was precisely the reason why some first-division teams were not as well worked; one of the others was while most sides change when they go up, motivated by fear, there was no need. In a phrase: ‘“I need to be defensive now’… sod that.” He asked players what they were afraid of – don’t ignore those doubts, address them – and set about convincing them they were good too, that they would be given the tools.

He also set about convincing footballers to come, aware that improvements were needed, especially turning play into goals. He told targets they would enjoy this. There’s something primal in that: no one parks the bus on the playground. One signing said he was unsure about joining a team fighting relegation. You won’t be, the coach said. Another had watched Elche in segunda and liked them but assumed: you won’t play like that in primera, to which the coach said: yes we will. “I think it’s going to be a nice year,” he told people. He listened too: he says he’s quite not the extremist he once was.

In total, Elche spent less than €7m and sold for twice that. Only Levante and Sevilla have lower salary limits, and Sevilla’s is a special case. When they signed strikers Rodríguez, Mir and Silva (a player Madrid this weekend mistook for Diogo Jota’s brother), Sarabia had his “cracks”. They scored two, one and one last season; they have four, four and two already this.

A coach who has called out his own players for diving and time-wasting, denounced everyday sexism in sport, and wore a Beatles T-shirt to Espanyol, last year Sarabia claimed Elche were “a global role model”, a team whose fans “don’t just come to see their team win but to enjoy what we’re doing”, and mostly got mocked for it. A touch presumptuous perhaps, but he reached week eight of his debut season in primera unbeaten. No team lasted longer. Elche, candidates for relegation, had climbed to a Champions League place. Sarabia received the manager of the month award from his father.

No, it didn’t last – or course it didn’t – but they are just two points off a European slot and they’re doing it their way. Oviedo and Levante, the other promoted clubs, are bottom and second-bottom. No one has had more of the ball. No player has won possession in the opposition’s half more than Affengruber or run further than Feibas. When they lost at Barcelona they “won” possession; now on Sunday they scored two and might have scored five against Madrid, securing a draw that felt a little like loss. Yes, Madrid were dire, but Elche were exceptional, only this isn’t so exceptional and it didn’t sound crazy to those who had been watching.

“Leaving with a bitter taste when you’ve taken a point off the leader is admirable,” Peña insisted, being pissed off something to be proud of. “We get two goals in set pieces and it makes me a little bit angry,” Affengruber said. “ A point against Real Madrid is good but if you see the game you feel a bit frustrated. We played amazing football. If you follow us this season you’ve seen that we try to do this at every stadium, and this is what makes us a little bit special. It sounds a little crazy, but this is what it is.”