Few clubs have experienced the ups and downs of football to quite the extent of Girona FC in recent years.
Top-flight debutants and top-half finishers in 2018. Relegated in 2019. Promoted again in 2022. Champions League qualifiers in 2024. Relegation candidates in 2025.
Cristhian Stuani has been there for the whole ride. He had already turned 30 when he joined the club back in the summer of 2017, arriving with something of a journeyman reputation following spells at Reggina, Albacete, Racing Santander, Espanyol and Middlesbrough.
The Uruguayan is proof that it’s never too late to find your home, and he’s never really looked back from a stunning debut season at Montilivi that saw him score 21 league goals, a tally bettered by only Leo Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Suarez and Iago Aspas.
Stuani’s 19-goal haul the following season represented more than half of Girona’s total, and the assumption was that the striker would leave the club following their relegation, with even Catalan neighbours Barcelona showing interest.
Not so. Stuani dropped down to the Segunda Division, scored 31 goals in the 2019/20 second tier and stuck the course through two unsuccessful play-off campaigns, before helping the Blanquivermells back to the top flight with 22 goals in the 2021/22 season.
Understandably given his advancing years, Stuani’s importance has decreased since Girona’s return to the Primera Division, with only eight starts in LaLiga 2022/23, five in 2023/24 and just three so far this season.
Yet, the man from the tiny Uruguayan town of Tala has kept doing what he does best – scoring goals.
Despite being limited to just 14 starts in the Spanish top flight over the past three seasons, Stuani has netted 27 times (nine in each campaign), at a rate of a strike every 99 minutes.
While he no longer has the legs to play the full 90 minutes, Stuani has continued to be a very useful impact sub, although it’s safe to say that his status as Girona’s top scorer this season also speaks to the struggles of his teammates and failures on the recruitment front.
Even allowing for the departure of last season’s Pichichi winner Artem Dovbyk, there was no scenario where Girona boss Michel would have been planning on relying so heavily on a now 38-year-old Stuani.
It was not supposed to go like this in the club’s debut European campaign, but despite the summer additions of Abel Ruiz, Yaser Asprilla, Bryan Gil, Arnaut Danjuma and Bojan Miovski, Michel has struggled to find any convincing solutions in the final third of the pitch.
The Girona boss has been tinkering with his attacking set-up all season without much luck, but he opted for a change of course for the crucial relegation six-pointer against Leganes at the end of last month, by handing both Stuani and Portu, another veteran of Girona’s debut top flight campaign and subsequent relegation, just their second league starts of the season.
The experienced duo delivered, with Portu setting up Stuani for the game’s opening goal on 54 minutes, in a flashback to the late 2010s and Girona’s initial golden period, before the class of 2023/24 took the club to unprecedented new heights.
Both players were replaced in the final 15 minutes, and could only watch on as the Catalan side failed to see the game out, with the 10 men of Leganes netting a 92nd-minute leveller.
That result at least ended a four-game losing streak, but Girona were still winless in 11 heading into Monday’s home fixture against Mallorca, with just a three-point advantage on the bottom three, and relegation a real possibility barely three months on from their final Champions League game.
Explaining his decision to start two of his most experienced players again against the Balearic Islanders, Michel told DAZN: “Well, Stuani has scored two goals in the last two games, and Portu has a spirit that we need on the pitch right now.
“And well, they’re two players who have always been available, who have always given their maximum performance, and we’re managing with them depending on how we see the game, the competition, the opponent. And well, they’re in the starting eleven now, but there are nine others.
“I’ve already told the players that we’re not going to win with Stuani alone, that we need the whole team, we need all five substitutions to be very good, because we have an opponent in front of us who are going to demand a lot from us and, well, everyone has to give 100%.
“It’s not a question of whose name is on the shirt, but that the Girona shirt today has that spirit that we all need.”
Not for the first time in recent weeks, his words hinted at a perceived lack of application at times this season from a squad that underwent an extensive overhaul last summer, following the departures of a host of key players.
While nobody expected them to match the miraculous achievements of last term, nor did there seem any prospect of things getting quite so bad, as quickly as this.
Fortunately though, in their hour of need on Monday night, Stuani once again delivered with his third goal in as many games, this time enough to seal a vital 1-0 victory over Mallorca in what was a much-improved team display.
That clinical close-range finish in just the 10th minute, ended a run of 18 consecutive second-half goals for Stuani in LaLiga.
The veteran striker is scoring at a faster rate than Pichichi leaders Robert Lewandowski and Kylian Mbappe, and is just one goal shy of reaching double figures in the top flight for the first time in six years.
With one of their final four games against rock bottom and already-relegated Real Valladolid, Michel’s side should really get over the line and secure safety from this position, with Stuani’s goals effectively dragging them towards survival and adding yet another chapter to his remarkable Girona story.
When he finally hangs up his boots, the Uruguayan will go down as a true club legend in every sense of the word, and the defining figure from by far the most successful period in Girona’s history to date.
