A matchday at El Molinón from the inside: the empty dressing room at 12:30, the pitch, the players arriving and the final ovation

What's up, folks? I've been going to El Molinón since I was old enough to remember: nearly thirty years. First holding someone's hand, then with mates and for years now with a camera, but always from the same spot — the stand. My seat, my sandwich, my frustrations and my joy. And on Saturday, September 6th, I walked through a different door.

I was inside El Molinón from 12:30, four hours before the Sporting-Girona matchday 4: the empty stadium, the dressing room set up, the players arriving, the pitch-side warm-up and the match from above the benches. This is everything I saw, and most importantly everything you don't see on the telly.

🕧 12:30 — An empty El Molinón is a different stadium

The first thing that hits you isn't how big it is. It's the silence. A pitch for nearly 30,000 people with nobody inside sounds like freshly cut grass, sprinklers and workers shouting at each other from one end to the other. And suddenly you understand one thing: the stadium isn't the noise. We make the noise.

Walking on the pitch has a trick to it, besides: you don't. You walk round the edge, along the touchline, where they tell you to. The pitch on matchday is treated, cut to the millimetre and with a pattern they make specifically for the cameras. Touching it beforehand is like sticking your finger in the cake before blowing out the candles.

👕 The dressing room: the most orderly place on earth

And from there, into the dressing room. Which was what impressed me most about the whole day, and there was plenty to impress you.

It's surgical. Every locker with its number above it, from 1 onwards. The shirt hung and pressed, with the number facing the door. The boots lined up. The flip-flops placed. The water. The socks folded. And all of that four hours before anyone arrives, done by people whose names don't appear anywhere.

I stood staring at Gelabert's number 10, Konrad's number 11 and Ferreres' number 35 hanging in a row and thought: inside here, in three hours' time, it'll be decided how these lads go out to play. Not on the whiteboard: here, in this silence.

🚪 The players arriving: the most human moment of the day

Around 14:30 they start trickling in. And this is where all the solemnity drops, because they arrive like anyone else coming to work: headphones on, wash bag under their arm, checking their phone and saying hi to everyone down the Quini space corridor.

Not one of them walked past without saying hello. Not one. And that really throws you, when you've spent half your life shouting at them from the stand. You realise the distance between player and fan is much smaller than it seems from seat 12 in row 30.

🧉 The pitch-side warm-up: this is where you see real football

If you ever get to choose just one moment to watch from down there, pick this one. The pitch-side warm-up is incredible. For two reasons the telly never shows you:

• The sound of the ball. It doesn't exist on the telly. Down there, a tight twenty-metre pass sounds like a gunshot. When they really strike it, you jump.
• The speed. This was what really blew my mind. From the stand, Second Division football looks slow. Two metres away, you can't follow the ball with your eyes. None of us would last ten seconds in there. Not one of us.

And then there's the scene above, which for me sums up the whole day: the mate and the thermos by the bench, with the stadium filling up behind. A dressing room ritual from time immemorial, which at a club like Sporting sits alongside the prematch shirt, cameras and lights. Modern football and football forever in the same square metre.

🎬 The match, from above the benches

I watched the Sporting 0-2 Girona from just above the benches, and I'm warning you about one thing: you suffer much more from there.

You hear the assistant coach. You hear the fourth official. You hear when a player asks for a sub and when another complains they haven't been given a call. And most of all you hear the bench react two seconds before the crowd: they see the move coming before you do, and from their faces you know if what's coming is trouble or not.

You know how the match went: we dominated, Girona shot twice and scored twice — Asprilla's chip in the 27th and Carles Pérez's absolute thunderbolt in the 76th — Gazzaniga saved everything else, and yet El Molinón still stood up to applaud at the end. The full analysis, player ratings and the debut of academy product Bruno Rubio are in the match report.

🧠 Five things I learned that don't make it on TV

1. The stadium starts working at noon. By the time you leave your house, El Molinón's been buzzing for half a day with people you'll never see: groundskeeping, dressing rooms, security, catering, press.
2. The dressing room's ready hours before kickoff. It's not some chaotic kit dump: it's the most organised space I've ever walked into.
3. The footballers arrive at work like it's work. With headphones, with their toiletries and saying hello in the corridors. Less drama, more humanity than you'd imagine.
4. Football is infinitely faster than it looks on screen. Pitch-side, you can't follow the ball. This should be mandatory viewing before anyone criticises from their sofa.
5. The noise from the stands reaches down there in full. All of it. The good and the bad. When someone says "you can feel the crowd's support", that's not just press conference speak: you hear it and you feel it.

🎽 I got a shirt signed by the whole squad

At the end of the day, when the players came out, several stopped to sign my shirt. A Sporting shirt with «ELOPI23» on the back, which I screen-printed at the Siroko shop in Gijón — that's where you can add your own number and name, whether it's your favourite player or your own, using the ELOPI23 code.

And I'm still sitting on the same question I threw at you after the match: do I raffle it off or hang it here as a backdrop? Let me know in the comments, because you lot are the ones calling the shots.

🎟️ How do you experience this if you're not a content creator?

You ask me that a lot, so let me be straight: what I did was only possible because the club opened the door for us, and that's not something you can just buy. But El Molinón can be experienced in other ways:

• By going to the ground. Sounds obvious, but here it is: the best way to experience El Molinón is still the stands on a Saturday. Here's when Sporting plays, always up to date.
• Getting there early. If you arrive 45 minutes before instead of five, you catch the full warm-up, the buzz around the stadium and the ground filling up. It's a whole different vibe and doesn't cost a penny more.
• Watching the bench. Now that I know what goes on there, I swear I watch matches differently. Try it for a bit: focus on the bench instead of the ball.

Plus this season, everything that happens at El Molinón will be right here: the Hypermotion standings by the minute, matchday guides, your vote in Your XI before each game and The Ratings after.

Big thanks again to Sporting and Siroko for letting me tell this story. Nearly thirty years going to El Molinón and it took coming through the other door to realise how massive what we've got really is. PUXA SPORTING. 🔴⚪

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