There is a growing feeling in the league whenever teams check the schedule and see Ceuta on the horizon. A sense of competitive lethargy. The bad kind. The kind that wears you down. It doesn’t matter the context, the moment, or the standings. José Juan Romero’s team forces you to roll up your sleeves. To suffer. To play long, grinding matches. To chip away at stone for ninety minutes. Racing felt it a few weeks ago at the Murube. Now Castellón felt it too—another destructive force in the category when they have space to run. Castellón had just steamrolled Málaga at La Rosaleda barely two weeks prior. And yet, they found themselves trapped once again in that competitive mud that Ceuta has been building all season.
Ceuta celebrates Marcos’ goal against Castellón.
55 points. Another brushstroke adding shine to a season that stopped being normal a long time ago. Castellón found exactly the scenario they wanted after going 0-1 up: meters to run, transitions, space, and Ceuta clinging to Guille Vallejo. Normally, Pablo Hernández’s team would kill you there. Or at least finish breaking you. Many teams in that situation crumble. Break apart. Start watching the clock, waiting for the storm to pass. Not this one. This Ceuta has an uncommon resilience. They absorb the blow. Even when the game becomes chaotic, they still feel comfortable within the disorder. They don’t lose their heads. They wait. They wait until they find another crack to slip back through. And they end up returning. They did it again against Castellón, to the point of pinning them back in stoppage time under the downpour, with the Murube pushing as if something huge was still at stake. That is perhaps one of this team’s great virtues. They never fully disconnect. They never completely fall. They always find a way to compete again, even when the scenario is tilted. It doesn’t matter that some players are running on fumes. It doesn’t matter that there are key injuries or players going through rough patches. It happened during the season to Kuki, to Rubén Díez, now to Redru precisely when he was hitting his best form of the season, and also to other important pieces that have fallen along the way. Matos is no longer having that differential presence from the first half of the season either. And yet, Ceuta keeps finding answers through the collective. They remain recognizable. They still have soul.
Ceuta’s lineup against Castellón.
The easy thing at this point of the year would be something else. To ease off a bit. To lower the intensity half a notch. Football already starts looking toward summer even with games still to play. Players inevitably think about contracts, the next step, or their next destination. Clubs are also moving. Edu Villegas has been working on next season’s squad for weeks because football never stops. And in the middle of all that noise, Ceuta keeps competing with tremendous honesty, as if they were playing for their lives every weekend. There’s also a lot of José Juan Romero in that. Not so much from the tactics board, but from something much more complex to build in May: keeping the hunger alive in a locker room that would already have plenty of excuses to let go a little. His phrase about “huevos como castores” sounded like one of his typical quips, but behind the joke there’s a lot of truth.
AD Ceuta – CD Castellón
José Juan Romero: “Once again, the huevos como castores”
AD Ceuta – CD Castellón
Castellón couldn’t finish off at the Murube
This Ceuta scratches. Bites. Exhausts. And ends up dragging you exactly into the kind of game they want to play. That’s why, even though the standings say their job has been done for weeks, no one really wants Ceuta in front of them.