Alright, let me walk you through how I put together this Betis and Espanyol season recap. Started by firing up Football Manager last night around 9 PM – my ancient laptop took forever to load the Spanish league database. Wanted both teams’ full season stats so badly I nearly spilled coffee on the keyboard.
Cracking Open the Data
First thing I did was hunt down stats websites showing goals, assists, red cards – all that basic stuff. Manually typed every number into Excel like some medieval scribe. Took me two hours just to sort through Espanyol’s mess of a season. Their away record made me wanna cry – only 3 wins all season! Highlighted that cell blood-red immediately.
Watched actual game clips next. YouTube became my second home scrolling through fan uploads. Saw Betis absolutely dismantle Atlético back in April – saved that clip under “HOLY CRAP” folder. Notice how Espanyol conceded? Their keeper kept rushing out like his house was on fire. Paused footage to scribble notes about defensive positioning disasters.
Building the Highlights Reel
For Betis’ section, focused on:
- Fekir pirouetting through defenders like they’re training cones
- That insane bicycle kick against Valencia
- How their stadium turns into a green-and-white tsunami during derbies
Used DaVinci Resolve to chop clips together. Timeline looked like abstract art with all my messy edits. Rendering took ages – perfect time for snack break. Ate three empanadas while watching the progress bar crawl.
Biggest headache?
Stats sites disagreed on possession percentages. One said Betis had 52% against Real Sociedad, another claimed 48%. Spent twenty minutes rewatching that entire snoozefest just to manually count passes. My verdict: both sites were wrong – actual number was 51.3%. My cat could run that site better.
Finished around 2 AM feeling cross-eyed but satisfied. Final document had:
- Six pages of color-coded tables
- Seven annotated video clips
- My margin notes complaining about Espanyol’s tactics
Totally worth the sleep deprivation. Next season? Definitely automating the data scraping part. My fingers still hurt from typing.