Girona are top of La Liga, but Man City's stake means it is no fairytale

There are Girona, the team from the 14,000-capacity stadium, top of the pile. This despite an overhaul in the summer when influential loanees Valentín Castellanos and Rodrigo Riquelme returned to their parent clubs, Santiago Bueno left for Wolves and one-time Southampton stalwart Oriol Romeu was sold to (checks notes) Barcelona.

This should have been a season of regression after Girona finished 10th last year, their first since promotion. Instead, a new team has emerged which hits several feelgood notes. It stirs memories of Leicester City in 2016. There is the firecracker Brazilian winger Sávio who is capable of troubling any defender, much like Riyad Mahrez. Versatile midfielder Aleix Garcia is a selfless improver of everyone around him, in N’Golo Kante style. And playing the role of Wes Morgan in defence is old warhorse Daley Blind.

They are led by the regulation intense Iberian manager Míchel, who played nearly 400 times for Rayo Vallecano before being cruelly discarded by them when back as manager, despite winning promotion. Swap pizza for paella and you have your Claudio Ranieri.

Before your eyes become dewy it is worth noting that Girona’s chairman is Pere Guardiola (some relation: Pep’s brother) and the club are the Spanish outpost of the City Football Group (CFG). This is the 12-team worldwide network set up in 2013 by Manchester City CEO Ferran Soriano which includes City themselves, New York City FC, Melbourne City and Montevideo City Torque in Uruguay.

It owns 47 per cent of Girona, who were welcomed to the fold in 2017 by which time CFG had perhaps realised it looks slightly villainous to be adding the City suffix to previously established team names and changing home strips to sky blue.

Another treble for Pep Guardiola this season is unlikely, but not out of the question for CFG. Their flagship team will be hard to displace in England, Sichuan Jiuniu took the Chinese second-tier title in October and who knows, perhaps Girona can cling on in Spain?

It is not all going so impeccably. Troyes were relegated from Ligue 1 in May which would certainly not have been on any strategic roadmaps. Troyes’ ownership of Sávio, now thriving on loan at Girona, is a happier example of clubs in the same network helping one another out. All within the rules, of course, just like the regular movement of players between the Pozzo family’s Watford and Udinese.

As ever, for anyone born before 2000, the concept of Manchester City as the world’s dominant footballing power requires some suspension of disbelief. Yes the football is otherworldly and its protagonists are weirdly likeable despite all their success, but what about those 115 alleged breaches of Premier League rules? Some similarly selective thinking may be required when looking at their commercial revenue numbers too – higher now than Liverpool, Manchester United and Real Madrid.

And yet there is little to fault the way Girona have overachieved in La Liga. They have not spent extravagantly on players, they are merely playing a version of Guardiola’s stiflingly excellent football under the tutelage of a promising manager.

Because of this they have plenty of goodwill among Spanish fans, who are largely delighted at the novelty of a smaller team bloodying some noses. Nothing improper or even underhand has happened which should sully their rise, especially as it is unlikely they will still be on top of La Liga at the end of 2023, let alone the end of the season.

But return to the moment when you learned they were beating the giants of Spanish football, then learned the identity of their part-owners. That is a very modern sort of disappointment. Buying football success is not enough for CFG. Now they own its fairytales too.