Luis Garcia

I'll forgive you if you don't know all that much about Real Madrid's weekend conquerors Getafe. I'll even forgive you if you watched shots of the winning coach and wondered whether Luis Garcia might be some sort of genetically modified cross between Tom Hanks and Ray Liotta.

In fact, he's the impossibly good-natured 39 year-old who has somehow made himself an utter nightmare for Jose Mourinho since the Portuguese arrived in Spain in 2010.

From that date, the Special One has faced Garcia's Levante and then his Getafe four times away from home. In the first season Mourinho drew 0-0 at Levante, lost 2-0 at Levante in the cup, clung on for a very hard-earned 1-0 win at Getafe last season, then lost 2-1 this weekend at the same venue.

During that time, Garcia's Levante registered a 1-1 home draw with Barcelona, and his Getafe side last season famously defeated Pep Guardiola's troops 1-0 in what proved a pretty fatal blow to their title chase. Above and beyond these major scalps, during his two full seasons in Spain's Primera Division, Garcia has defeated Atletico Madrid (twice), drawn with and beaten Valencia (3-1), put five goals past Sevilla and generally posted notice that he is a burning young talent.

His low profile is not governed by his achievements, merely by the fact that the biggest home crowd he's ever coached in front of was 20,000 when Barcelona came to the city of Valencia and drew 1-1 with Levante.

Although Garcia was the toast of the Camp Nou on Sunday night, and pretty damn popular over at Atletico Madrid, too, he is both a hidden treasure and an acquired taste.

He receives relatively little coverage and is thrown relatively few bouquets by the Spanish media -- and there may be an explanation for that.

While Getafe played an absolutely commendable 90 minutes -- in which, despite the illegal use of a hand by Colunga before Abdelaziz Barrada's winning goal, they might have scored more -- Garcia doesn't espouse the kind of football for which La Liga has gained fame.

By no means is his philosophy of football that of a philistine, nor is it knuckle-dragging or monotonous. However, he wouldn't consider himself a devotee of the sort of sweet, flowing, one-touch-and-move brand of soccer which, say, Barcelona and, last season, Athletic Bilbao have put in vogue.

"If you take away the Spanish national team and Barca, then I don't see anyone else winning with this style of one-touch passing football" Garcia comments without any edge, or sneer. "As a coach, I emanate from a generation influenced by Arrigo Sacchi at Milan, and latterly by the achievements of Rafa Benitez. I teach my players that football has room for all styles to be valid. You can easily sit back a little, put the other team under ferocious pressure with your pressing of them in possession and play very directly once you win the ball. It's all valid."

Especially if your team conjures a win in a local derby against Real Madrid using precisely that smash-and-grab mentality to perfection.

Beyond the disappointment everyone associated with Los Blancos will feel, the big sadness was that the world watching this game saw pretty vast empty spaces in the Coliseum Alfonso Perez -- inexplicable and inexcusable as far as most will be concerned.

I'd like to explain the 48 percent attendance (compared to capacity) with the idea that it was Sunday, it was a late kickoff (21:00) and the ticket prices were extravagant. But that's not enough.

Last May for the final match of the season with a 19:00 kickoff and much cheaper prices, only 9,000 turned up at Getafe to see them lose to Zaragoza.

This club and Rayo Vallecano vie for the third and fourth spot in the hierarchy of clubs in Madrid and, frankly, those who run Getafe must sometimes wonder why they bother.

Not Garcia. "What I say to the players is that we don't have a 'bad' support, we just have fewer supporters," he says. "Only 9,000 tend to come but they give all their loyalty and passion when they do. I'll fight for those 9,000. Even if there were only 3,000, I'd feel the same, and my players must too." They did on Sunday.

(PS: Stay tuned, folks. The Barca side Garcia's Getafe beat last season is back at the Coliseum the round after next, right after the FIFA international break, following which the big teams with lots of Spain players often tend to stumble. So genuinely, stay tuned.)

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The Spanish Moyes would be a very very good comparison.

Great article, thanks for posting RG.

Very very clever manager , handles every big teams like a boss.

Finally this guy is noticed, good article and thanks for sharing. He is very good at planning and preparing for big teams and is quite successful with his approaches against them. Even Mourinho admits he struggles against him.

he is great but Sporting Gijon's former coach was better both stats wise and popularity