Seven Europa League titles and now a relegation battle: Sevilla's fall from grace in La Liga

Sevilla, seven-time winners of the UEFA Europa League, the most decorated club in the history of that competition, are now one point above the La Liga relegation zone with six games remaining. Levante, who were seemingly condemned weeks ago, are two points behind them. The gap is one dropped point. Six games, one point of separation, and a Segunda División that has never once in Sevilla's modern history held a team from the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán stadium.

The club’s 2-0 loss to Levante on Thursday night told you everything about where Sevilla are right now. Luis García's side created chances. Rubén Vargas blazed over from a perfect Lucien Agoumé through ball with the score still at 0-0. Akor Adams fired just over from distance. Alexis Sánchez, brought on as a substitute among five second-half changes, couldn't find the equaliser that would have lifted the pressure. And then, in stoppage time, Levante broke on the counter and Romero converted what amounted to a two-goal cushion that made the result feel even more brutal than it already was.

One point above the drop with five games to play is a statistical reality. The performances suggest the margin of error is even smaller than that.

May 2023 in Budapest, Sevilla beat Roma on penalties to win their seventh Europa League title, the most any club has won in the competition's history. Three consecutive titles between 2014 and 2016. Another in 2020. The seventh in 2023. The trophy cabinet is extraordinary.

What the trophy cabinet obscures is that winning European competition seven times while finishing mid-table in La Liga is only financially sustainable if the revenue keeps coming in, the wage structure stays manageable, and the recruitment model doesn't lose its precision.

All three of those things broke down at roughly the same time.

The debt accumulated through years of buying and selling in the transfer market, a model that worked brilliantly under Monchi in his first tenure and then became progressively less reliable on his return, left Sevilla structurally exposed when results turned.

In 2023-24, they narrowly avoided relegation on the final day. The summer that followed should have been a root-and-branch reset. Instead, the changes were cosmetic. García came in as coach, several squad players arrived on modest fees, and the club started 2025-26 with a wage bill that remained one of the highest in the bottom half of La Liga, funded partly by the Europa League prize money that may not come again for some time. When the results didn't improve, the financial cushion wasn't there to absorb the drop-off.

The squad, as it stands, is not short of quality on paper. Vlachodimos is a reliable goalkeeper. Gudelj has experience. Agoumé, signed from Inter Milan, has been one of the better performers in a difficult season. Akor Adams has eight league goals, which would be a respectable return in a functional side. Vargas, when he's confident, is a dangerous wide player.

The problem isn't individual talent in isolation. It's that the team has no consistent identity, no reliable defensive structure, and no means of controlling games when opponents press them with intensity.

Levante, a side that had been in the relegation zone for most of the season and arrived at Thursday's game on the back of three wins from five, pressed Sevilla's backline into mistakes repeatedly. The reversed penalty decision in the first half, where VAR correctly overturned an initial spot-kick award against Gudelj, was almost irrelevant by the end. Levante deserved their win and created enough to have scored more.

The historical weight of what is happening is the thing that makes this season difficult to watch dispassionately. Sevilla have never been relegated in the modern era. The club that produced Sergio Ramos and Jesús Navas from its academy, that beat Manchester United in a Europa League semi-final, that drew 2-2 with Liverpool in a Champions League group stage and won on penalties, that won the Europa League the year after finishing 14th in La Liga to prove that European excellence and domestic struggle could coexist indefinitely, is now looking at the Segunda División as a genuine possibility.

The contingency plans for what happens if they go down, how they restructure the wage bill, which players trigger release clauses, what the Europa League revenue gap does to their operating budget, are being discussed inside the club this week whether anyone will say so publicly or not.