Racing have Segunda in a stranglehold
José Alberto's side look different to your typical league leader, but their unique identity is what's helping to sustain their position.
Every now and again, a team comes along in Spain’s second division that look distinct to their competition. When ones does, it’s pretty easy to spot.
Typically, the second tier in Spain is a league where you live according to the scoreboard. What I mean it by that is: if the scoreboard says you’re winning, you’re bound to cede initiative. Some teams do so by a lot, others do it with more subtlety. But it’s a reality that the best and worst alike tend to follow. In the current campaign, all 22 teams average less possession than their opponent when ahead.
To be clear, having less ball control when you’re winning versus when you’re drawing or losing isn’t unique – it happens across all levels of the sport. However, it’s a trend that goes right through Segunda from top to bottom. There are no outliers, no teams who have the ability or the willingness to grip the game from beginning to end, smoothing their way to victory.
The point of all of this is just to demonstrate the parity that exists in Segunda. In the words of Racing boss José Alberto: “nobody runs over anyone in this division.”
And so in a league where nobody truly dominates the play or share of territory, it’s left to those involved to think about how best to navigate that fact. Do you prioritise being solid on the defensive end and play the margins? Do you open games up and hope more wins arrive at the expense of more losses? Is it too risky to deviate from the average Segunda approach? Is it now lucrative to be different?
In the case of Real Racing Club de Santander – the team leading the way in 2024-25 – it’s clear that their calculation has been made. They’re attacking the competition on every front, and they’re bringing some unique tools to fuel it.
A novel approach to Segunda success
First things first, Racing are currently top of Segunda by 10 points. That’s a big old margin for this division – especially this early. And in other outlier things, they’ve won all seven away matches so far this season. Teams just normally don’t do that at this level.
Are they running a bit too hot? Most likely. Racing are a top tier attack by the measure of both goals (25) and xG (24.7), but they’re a fairly average defence that, momentarily, look better than they probably are (12 conceded from 18.3 xG).
Is that cause for concern in the promotion race? Probably not. Racing are tearing through the competition with their super-charged, varied attack — one that assumes a level of ‘instability’ in the traditional sense of defence. The fact is, even if they start to see an uptick in their goals conceded column, in their present state their attacking performance promises to be their golden ticket. Racing have the best xG difference in the division (+6.4) and they hit harder than they get hit.
Anyway, onto the how.
Without getting too much into the weeds of positionism and relationism in football, it’s clear that we’re invoking a degree of the latter with Racing this season. At the very least, we’re not watching a team built for the former. Players huddle together on the side the ball is on, they don’t default into making the pitch big, and there’s a swiftness of touch to their combinations as they jink in and out of the traffic they’ve pulled into a certain area of the pitch.
At its essence, this probably isn’t a case of José Alberto waking up one day and deciding this is how his football team should and always will play. Nor is it a case of this less positional football being the only variable for their form. Like all coaches who live against the scrutiny of results and league tables, it appears no more complicated than that this way of playing suits the characteristics of Racing’s players – especially the ones who dictate what happens in the opposition half.
The most visible element of Racing’s football revolves around their most talented attackers seeking each other out on the pitch, without much regard for stepping on each other’s toes or being ‘out of position’ when developing attacks.
The three players who occupy the positions behind the striker — Iñigo Vicente, Pablo Rodríguez and Andrés Martín — all stand out for their interplay and craft, which comes back to the previous point on this suiting their personnel. Instead of fielding two of them in traditional wide roles, opening up the pitch, and feeding them the ball to make things happen, Racing bring them all together and tap into their connective ability.
From their 4-2-3-1 setup, it’s normal to see all four of Racing’s attackers hoarded on one side of the pitch — all within around 10 yards of each other — while they go about building moves. In that way, they almost reduce an 11v11 game to a series of small-sided games on the path to goal. But crucially, always with the intention of being incisive in the process.
The first thing about this approach – without even getting into its actual utility – is that it is different to what Segunda teams usually see. That alone counts for a lot. Even in the age of detailed match preparation, we consistently see Racing provoke breakdowns in the opposition’s shape through it, forcing moments where multiple opposition players simply aren’t on the right page defensively. Their frame of reference has changed, and their typical defensive cues can go up in smoke.
Instead of looking to open up space by making their opponents defend as large a space as possible, Racing basically do the opposite. They bank on short and sharp changes in the direction of play, carried out with numbers around the ball – all the while jabbing runs at the last line through the players that aren’t immediately available. And when the width comes, it’s usually from an arriving full back.
The curious part for a team playing this less positional style, where they’re seeking combination play and bouncing passes at close quarters, is that Racing don’t tend to keep the ball for long. In fact, their sequences of play are shorter than every other team in Segunda this season (6.8 seconds on average). That’s a rare element for a team who lead the league in big chances (48) by a healthy margin.
It’s not that Racing can’t keep the ball — it’s that they won’t. As soon as they find their window to advance the play or make the forward pass that opens things up, they don’t hesitate. Racing get on the inside and punch from within.
In the example below against Córdoba, they work their way through to goal with relative ease — essentially through having the numbers advantage where it counted. From what looks like a congested scene of attack versus defence, two short passes land Lago Junior in acres of space right in the middle of their opponent’s shape. Córdoba had simply lost track of their match-ups, while having to make quick decisions within the swarm of Racing players.
Later on in the same game, José Alberto’s side would open the scoring through a similarly flooded attack on the opposite side. After attracting pressure from Córdoba’s midfield and evading them with a short triangle, Racing find themselves in business, with a forward pass open and Córdoba’s defensive line all frozen in position, occupied to capacity by a host of attackers.
Too late to stop Iñigo Vicente receiving and turning; too late to recover their markers on the scramble back towards their own goal.
One of the main ways in which Racing turn these congested-looking scenes into profitable space comes through not just congregating players in one area of the pitch, but by stacking them across different heights.
We see this most often when it comes to the opposition’s defensive line. With a 4-2-3-1 that essentially turns into three no. 10s and a centre forward, Racing are looking to manipulate the last line as much as they are looking to receive passes. Though they attract attention around the ball by default, they want to take players away when the time is right.
Here against Real Zaragoza, note how the most advanced attackers open up space for Pablo Rodríguez — their starting no. 10 — to receive a pass in between the lines. With players on practically the same line going west to east, Racing sink the defensive line with runners and free up players beneath them to appear in the space.
It’s a similar scene again in the clip below. As soon as Racing manage to find midfielder Aritz Aldasoro with the first pass, a narrow hoard of attackers sink Córdoba’s back line, driving away anyone that might be in the vicinity to come out and close Aldasoro down, while laying the table to advance at speed in the process.
The word that defines this Racing side, above all, is vertical. The Spanish meaning of the word refers to a team who look to create attacks with minimal waste, who advance at speed and play forward as quick as they feasibly can. It doesn’t mean launching the ball from back to front, as literal as vertical might sound.
Of the 21 goals they’ve scored when the sequence of play has begun in open play this season, 71% of them have been netted in a move containing a maximum of two passes (15/21). Indeed, that fact tells us not only about what Racing are doing with the ball, but what they’re doing before they have it.
Attacking on all fronts
When Racing do lose the ball within their close quarters style of attacking, they’re usually in a good position to try and recover the ball quickly. Playing vertical football doesn’t only happen in a vacuum of possession. José Alberto’s side make plenty of hay by what they do when the ball isn’t under their spell.
Again, this is an element of play that suits Racing’s personnel. They have a young and leggy attacking core, supplemented by two central midfielders in Aritz Aldasoro and Unai Vencedor are both excellent at recovering the ball and applying the squeeze. Put them in prime position to do that and the results are — not always, but often — productive.
Racing follow up their punchy, central attacks by swarming the vicinity when the ball changes hands. They lead all Segunda teams this season for both high turnovers (131) and high turnovers that end in shots (29). In fact, take those as per game averages, and they are both the highest by a team in a single Segunda campaign on record as it stands (since 2014-15).
In a sport where attack and defence are inseparable, Racing make it easy for us to see. And though the aim is to recover the ball quickly with the idea of creating chances, there’s inevitably an element of defensive protection at play — at least within their own definition of defending.
Racing make use of their proximity to the ball when attack turns to defence, trapping opponents in a net of players, and limiting space for the first pass to be found. In a league where counter-pressing is done conservatively by the league average, they ask the question: are you good enough to play through or around us?
Here, again against Tenerife, we see the life cycle of their attack-defence-attack. When Iñigo Vicente is a bit too hasty in playing forward — leading to a turnover — Racing’s net of attackers become defenders and manage to stop the first pass of a Tenerife possession. And with the resulting numbers advantage around the ball, Racing flow smoothly into an attack of their own, evading Tenerife’s own attempts to counterpress.
Like all strategies in this sport, there are none that are made up of only pros. Racing, however, are clear on their defensive bet. At the risk they accept of giving up transitions and counter attacks, they put their chips in on reducing air time and disrupting the opposition’s rhythm. If they can stop the ball getting to the front in the first place, they will cut down the volume of attacks — even if they give up a big chance from time to time.
Though the first 15 games, Racing have a 60% ownership of big chances that occur in their games. That’s higher than anyone managed in Segunda last season. Their aggressive bet, until further notice, is proving to be a winning one.
To see how far that extends, take their 2-0 win over Burgos last time out. Despite seeing Manu Hernando sent off in the 40th minute, Racing not only maintained their two-goal advantage, but their bold approach with and without the ball in doing so. They would go on to catch Burgos offside on 12 occasions in the match; the most ever in a Segunda game on record.
The thing is, Burgos knew all about Racing’s defensive line. A frustrated Luis Miguel Ramis would say as much after the game. They had prepared for it, they had the quality of passers to play passes over and beyond it, and yet, they repeatedly got it wrong when Racing got it right.
Setting the line not on the halfway line, but just before it, allowed Racing to create the same situation repeatedly. With a few yards of space to jump — before they’d be on or over the halfway line, making any jumps useless — a quick shift from the back line just before a pass was about to be made earned them flag after flag.
Instead of being handed the territory in Racing’s half, Burgos fell into a pattern of whether their central defenders could find an onside attacker with a chipped ball, while keeping it out of sweeper keeper Jokin Ezkieta’s range.
Again, there’s the element of Racing raging against the uniformity of Segunda. In the same way their style of attacking diverges from the rest, presenting a different dynamic to the average league game, their approach to defending takes their opponent into uncharted territory.
By not settling into a 4-4-1 shape and protecting their box, Burgos were denied the natural momentum swing or pattern of game that a man advantage in Segunda usually permits. The steady encroach, the free passes, the easier access into crossing opportunities — the pattern of an 11v10 in Segunda didn’t appear.
When asked in his post-game press conference why his side had kept their line high, even with 10 men on the pitch, José Alberto’s reply was a simple one:
“You can choose to defend closer to your box and defend more situations there, or you can choose to defend arriving [there]. We choose the second one.”
This is Real Racing Club de Santander in a nutshell. Instead of trying to be competitive on everyone’s terrain, this team brings you to a different one and challenges you to hold up. Their choices, their identity, has long been set — the risks assumed and factored into the equation.
All that’s left now is to follow it unflinchingly, as the rest of the league search for answers.
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A comment on Marco Sangalli's wonderful season is missed over here.