Castellón: the leader that defends with the ball
With last season's defence and a new midfield, Castellón top the Segunda División having conceded 4 goals in 11 games.
On 25 October, at the Castalia, Castellón put four past Sporting de Gijón and take back first place in the Segunda División. Adam Jakobsen scores after three minutes and again after the break, Israel Suero gets the second and Álvaro García wraps up the 4-0 in the 87th minute. It is their eighth win in eleven games: 26 points, eight wins, two draws and a single defeat, in Andorra. But the figure that explains the leaders is not in the goals-for column. It is in the other one: four goals conceded in eleven games.
Five months ago, the same team fell just short of LaLiga. They finished sixth in the regular season, with 72 points, and went out in the play-off semi-final against Almería (1-1 at the Castalia and 3-2 in Almería). They had scored 70 goals in 42 games, but conceded 51: more than one a game. This season, with the same coach, Pablo Hernández, and almost the same defence, they concede 0.36 a game, the best record of the 22 teams in the division.
The figure that explains the leaders is not in the goals-for column. It is in the other one.
It is no surprise that Castellón look at their numbers closely. Their owner and president, Haralabos Voulgaris, bought the club in July 2022 after heading quantitative research at the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, and has built a project that makes decisions from data. Ours say something very specific about the Segunda División leaders: they defend with the ball.
No team in LaLiga Hypermotion keeps it for longer: 60.8% average possession, almost eleven points above the division's median. And when they lose it, they go and get it back: they allow opponents 9.2 passes per defensive action, the fourth most aggressive figure in the league, and make 28.1 tackles and interceptions per game, the third most. The result is an opponent that barely gets there: 3.3 shots on target per game, the second-lowest figure of the 22 teams, and seven clean sheets in eleven games. In our website's team profile, which compares each club with the rest of its league, Castellón score 100 in possession and goalkeeping, 90 in defence and finishing and 88 in pressing. Their least brilliant areas, creation (74) and arrivals in the box (75), are still well above average.
Behind it all stands Romain Matthys. The 28-year-old Belgian goalkeeper has played all 990 league minutes and Castellón save 88% of the shots they face, the best rate in the division. His Big Data rating is 88, the highest among the 27 LaLiga Hypermotion goalkeepers we analyse.
In front of him, the pair who have grown the most without moving an inch. Alberto Jiménez, 33, and Jeremy Mellot, 32, were already starters last season (3,311 and 3,181 minutes) and this season they have the highest and second-highest ratings among the 68 centre-backs in the Segunda División: 79 and 77. With the league coefficient, which adjusts every figure to the level of the competition, Jiménez is even second among the 1,664 centre-backs of the 26 leagues we analyse, tied with another player, and Mellot fifth. They are not ordinary centre-backs: Jiménez is in the 93rd percentile for possession and circulation and the 88th for pressing, the first to bring the ball out and the first to jump in to win it back. Alongside them, Argentine Agustín Sienra, 27, provides what the other two do not, goals: two of them, at Girona and at Las Palmas, and a 88th percentile in finishing.
The difference lies one step further forward, in a midfield that has been almost entirely rebuilt. Álvaro Martín, Íñigo Córdoba and Juanjo Nieto did not play for Castellón last season; together with Diego Barri, the only one who remains, they form a line with teeth. Martín and Córdoba are in the 91st percentile for pressing and intensity among the midfielders of the 26 leagues, Barri in the 90th and Nieto in the 82nd. None of them stands out for goals, and none of them needs to: their job is to get the ball back quickly.
Among them, the surprise. Matías Orozco, an 18-year-old Colombian midfielder, has one goal and three assists in just 363 minutes and a rating of 79, with a 92nd percentile in chance creation. He is also the player with the highest market value in the squad according to our model, 4.1 million euros. He shares that rating with Francisco Castillo, 28, who scored against Celta B and gets into the box like few midfielders (86th percentile for arrivals). They are the two highest ratings among the 123 midfielders in the Segunda División, but also two short samples, under 400 minutes, best read with caution.
That Castellón won games by trading blows; this one wins them without letting the opponent play.
Up front, Castellón have two strikers who could not be more different. Israel Suero, 32, is the team's best outfield player according to the data: a rating of 84, the highest among the 45 centre-forwards in the Segunda División and the eighth among the 1,093 in the 26 leagues. Five goals and two assists in 616 minutes, a goal involvement every 88 minutes, and the percentiles of a number 10: 89 in creation, 87 in finishing and 85 in possession. Ousmane Camara, 24, is something else: the striker who attacks space. Four goals in 609 minutes, 88th percentile for arrivals in the box and for finishing, but 57th in creation. Suero builds the attack; Camara finishes it. Last season, Camara was already the team's second top scorer, with 12 goals, behind only Álex Calatrava (15).
Eleven games are still a short sample to talk about promotion, and this same team finished sixth five months ago. But there is a difference the numbers do not hide. That Castellón won games by trading blows; this one wins them without letting the opponent play. With the same defence, a new midfield that presses like few others and a goalkeeper who saves almost everything, they have found a way to make the ball their best defence.
Data: API-Football, 2026/27 season up to 25/10/2026 (11 rounds of LaLiga Hypermotion) and 2025/26 season (regular season and play-off). Players' Big Data rating and percentiles: Al Primer Toque, against players in the same position in the 26 leagues we analyse, with the league coefficient (goalkeepers, against those in their league). Team profile: against the 22 LaLiga Hypermotion clubs. Market value: Al Primer Toque estimate. Short sample: Orozco (363 minutes) and Castillo (309).
