Betis’s bus made its way through a cloud of green smoke, while Sevilla’s passed the police cordon down the last, short stretch of empty street, turning off palm tree avenue to the Benito Villamarín. It was momentarily quiet outside, just a few stall holders in the sunshine, but inside the bus was different. On the right, a window had been smashed – not there, but four kilometres away, where a Sevilla fan had waved his team off over-enthusiastically – and sitting alongside it was the manager Joaquín Caparrós, exposed and in his element. Someone had put the club anthem on and he was belting it out like a man possessed, the 62-year-old shaking his fists as he sang. In the rows behind, the players banged on the glass. “We’re Sevilla and playing Betis is different,” he said.

It is, he knows, different to anything, anywhere – and he’s had a gun pulled on him in the dressing room. Born in Seville and once the Andalucían ‘national’ manager, he had unexpectedly been given another go – 18 years after his first derby, 13 after his last, and five months after a three-decade long coaching career had come to an end. And the man who had lifted Sevilla from the second división and helped lay the foundations for the best years of their lives, couldn’t be happier.

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“I took it on to help the club,” he said. Sevilla needed him. Asked earlier this season about missing out on European football, their then-manager Vincenzo Montella had insisted: “Non e una possibilita.” But, yes it was a possibility. They had beaten Manchester United at Old Trafford, played a European Cup quarter-final for the first time in 60 years and reached the Copa del Rey final. But they hadn’t won in seven league games and lost the cup final 5-0, which was when they sacked sporting director Oscar Arias and sacked Montella too, making Caparrós their third coach – for four nights only. “In football, you go from whore to nun in five minutes,” Caparrós reminded them.

On his first night back at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, he had run, leapt and shouted, conductor as well as coach, heart racing, jaw too, gum chewed into oblivion, hardly able to contain himself, the man who always said “my red blood boils”. In the stands they went with him every step of the way, and so did his players. “I’ve looked at their eyes and their balls and they’re red and white,” he said. After his (re-)debut, he was still full of energy, hyperactive and ultra-enthusiastic. “This is the hostia!” he said. “It’s the leche.” The consecrated bread, the milk, the dog’s dinglie-danglies. But the milk, he knew, was what was coming next.

That night, Sevilla defeated Real Sociedad 1-0; five days after that, they beat Real Madrid 3-2; and three days after that came the derby. For his club, it was a potential crisis. Europe was slipping from Sevilla’s grasp, Getafe up there too and rivals Betis – 5-3 winners at the Pizjuán – coming to prise their fingers apart

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“They’re preparing a party,” Caparrós added. Betis were safely in fifth or sixth, Europe confirmed, ready to enjoy it – preferably at the expense of their rivals. No pressure. No pressure? “Yeah, right,” one coach said. Everywhere their players went, the fans were there too, reminding them what this meant; 6,000 turned up for their final training session. Here was a chance to complete a double over their rivals 23 years on, to ensure they finished ahead of Sevilla for only the second time in 14 years. Betis coach Quique Setien was trying to calm them all down. “You don’t win just with eggs,” he noted, eggs being balls in Spanish, and he tweeted: “Betis fans can be calm.” It was accompanied by a picture of him tucking into a dozen fried eggs.

“I’ve asked my players not to lose their heads; to do what they have done all year,” he added but, they were, one insider later admitted, “crapping themselves.”

This was big, after all. “A señor derby,” El Correo called it. “Euroderbi,” Marca’s headline said. As for ABC, they were going further afield, their front cover insisting: “The world is watching.” Inside, where they clearly had a lot of space to fill and a journalist paid by the word, they were busy pointing out this was a game that would be watched in “over 180 countries”, helpfully offering up a list of “some of the countries, in alphabetical order, where this game can be seen.” The list was 201 countries long, including everywhere from ARY (the former Yugoslav Republic of) Macedonia to Zimbabwe, via everywhere else you’ve ever heard of ever and some places you probably haven’t, like the islands of Wallis and Futuna. Nearer to home, they were certainly watching: as the penultimate weekend began, this was one of the few matches with anything riding on it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lively scenes outside before the game. Photograph: Jose Manuel Vidal/EPA

Riding on the bus, meanwhile, Caparrós appared to make a ‘suck it’ gesture to Betis fans and pumping his fists as he sang and it turned in. Three hours later, he was doing it again. The fist bit, that is.

When the final whistle went in front of 55,588 people, the biggest crowd ever at the Benito Villamarín, Caparrós leapt. Marc Bartra had given Betis an early lead before a bizarre goal from Wissam Ben Yedder levelled it, and then he produced a lovely flick to enable Simon Kjaer to put Sevilla 2-1 up, only for Loren Morón to make it 2-2. “I don’t even know how I put it in, but then I ran like a madman to celebrate,” Loren said afterwards. Caparrós, meanwhile, insisted his side had deserved more, describing it as two points lost. But still he sent his players to one end to applaud the Sevilla supporters.

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The news from Madrid was good, after all. There, AS said, it was “war” but Atlético won it. Getafe had been beaten, meaning Sevilla secured seventh place with a week to spare. That means their season starting with three rounds of European qualifiers on 26 July, but at least it means European football, and if they won’t get much holidays then they can at least start them now. “We’ll go out and play in flip flops next week and that was unthinkable,” Caparrós said. “The derby is always special and I enjoyed it. I’m happy: we fulfilled our objective.” Sevilla have now qualified for Europe 14 times in the last 15 seasons, going back to 2004 – when he was last there. “The season has been like life itself,” Ben Yedder said. “Up and down.”

“I have seen things you’ll never believe,” wrote Francisco Pérez in ABC the day before the game. “I’ve seen spaceships in flames beyond Orion and C-Rays in the dark, but I have never seen Betis and Sevilla agree a result: here we spill blood even at the risk of it being our own.” There could be no pact, but ultimately the draw suited both, a happy ending from Nervión to Heliópolis. And, as Sevilla’s players turned to their fans, Betis’s began a lap of honour too, roared by their fans, bouncing about in the middle. “They deserved that,” Setien said. While Sevilla getting to Europe was to be expected, at the start of the season that was unthinkable for Betis. “We’d have taken seventh place in the last minute,” said the president.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sevilla players celebrate Simon Kjaer’s goal. Photograph: Fran Santiago/Action Plus via Getty Images

“I’m not going to say this is a miracle but I am frankly very happy; we have achieved something that wasn’t even an objective. We have done good things this season and we have done in one year what we might have hoped to do in three,” Setien said. “We’ve taken a very big step.”

“Everyone happy,” cheered Diario de Sevilla. “Seville wins,” ran the cover of Estadio Deportivo. It was, Marca said, “the perfect party”, their cover going for: “See you in Europe”, while AS’s local edition led on: “Everyone’s off to Europe.” This was “not Alfred or Amaia, not even Cyprus’s attractive entry, not the Israeli Netta … this was Seville’s Eurovision,” Estadio Deportivo wrote. For the fifth time, Seville has two teams in Europe. Only London will have more next year and only Madrid, Manchester, Rome and Milan can match them. And when it comes to atmosphere, maybe none can. No wonder Joaquín insisted: “Hopefully there will be a European derby next season.” Bartra couldn’t agree more. “These games really turn me on,” he said.

Talking points

• “We couldn’t believe it; we were a bit stunned,” Levante’s José Luis Morales said, speaking for just about everyone. Down at the Ciutat de Valencia, the team that had not lost all season were losing. Not just losing, either – getting hammered. With Tom and Yerri at the back, and Messi back home, it was all a bit cartoonish. Early in the second half, FC Barcelona were 5-1 down. Yes, five. Emmanuel Boateng has scored six goals this season – three of them in an hour against Barcelona. “But then,” Morales admitted, “you start to crap yourself a bit; you end up thinking all sorts.” From 5-1 it went to 5-2, then 5-3, and then 5-4. There were still 20 minutes left for Barcelona to rescue their perfect record, but it wasn’t to be. Nine times they had come from behind this season; the 10th was beyond them. And so, on the penultimate weekend, they are Invictus no more.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Levante players celebrate at the end. Photograph: Jose Jordan/AFP/Getty Images

• “It’s a bit much,” Xabi Prieto admitted after his team-mates wore a special Real Sociedad shirt with his face on instead of the club’s badge as he played his last ever game at Anoeta. But for him, captain and one-club man, nothing could ever be a bit much.

• That goal from Gareth Bale: woof.

• And Mirandés are champions.