Antony’s Real Betis transformation has Isco threatening a United heist

Antony Matheus dos Santos has played football with some bad men. Raised in Inferninho (Little Hell), a favela outside São Paulo, the way the Real Betis winger tells it, he grew up without shoes to play in or a bed of his own to sleep in, surrounded by drugs and guns. Some days he wouldn’t eat and one day, when he was six or seven, he had to jump over a dead body to get to school. Life was just the way it was, even on the rough concrete courts where his bleeding feet moved faster than the rest. “I played against traffickers and all sorts,” he said. “If you ask if I was scared, of course I was. But I always had a strong personality and the harder it was, the more I wanted to be there.”

So when someone threatened to kidnap him a week ago, Antony just laughed – and so did everyone else. This wasn’t São Paulo, this was Seville. And, like a lot of what is said there, it was just a joke, even if there were true words said in jest, born of fondness and admiration, a kind of desperation too, a disbelief that he is here with them and a determination to keep it that way. There was no anonymous letter this time, no ransom note cut from newspaper letters; instead, there was a message on Isco’s Instagram. “Antonio of Triana,” it read, “we’re going to kidnap you: this is your first warning.” A few days later, the second came. “If I have to provide the car to kidnap him, I will,” said former Betis player Joaquín. “However it happens, he has to stay.”

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They have to try something, and they really are trying everything. Antony joined Betis on loan from Manchester United in January. No purchase clause, no option to buy, and in truth no money to buy him, certainly nothing near the €100m United spent two years earlier, but right now the idea of him leaving doesn’t bear thinking about, awful for everybody, Antony included. Which is why Isco threatened to bundle him into the back of a car, why after the derby he had suggested: “We’ll have to do one of those crowdfunding things.”

That was a month ago and as he said so, live on TV, Antony stood silently alongside, gazing at him like a lovestruck teenager. The feeling is mutual, everyone smitten. Antony had ended that night on the shoulders of goalkeeper Adrián, shirt off, heaving a Betis flag through the sky, the Benito Villamarín, where his shirts now outsell all others, going as wild as if they had won the World Cup. He ended this Sunday night arriving back in the city late to find the training ground engulfed in green smoke, fans celebrating the return of their team, hundreds of them hugging him, holding on, trying to never let go. This is your third warning.

Back then, Antony had helped Betis to their first league win over Sevilla in seven years; now, he had scored a superb 91st-minute goal to complete a 2-1 comeback victory over Espanyol, the ball bending into the far top corner from the corner of the area, implausibly and perfectly placed. “Monumental,” his teammate William Carvalho called it, although the outrageous run and finish with which Giovani Lo Celso had equalised five minutes earlier might have been even better. As he celebrated, Antony pointed at the tattoo on his throat that says iluminado – enlightened, illuminated, the chosen one – and at full time Adrián was there again, laughing at the ludicrousness of what he had done, waggling his hand like he had trapped his fingers in a drawer and pushing him towards the travelling fans, pointing at him. Here he is, your GOAT.

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And, yes, they have started calling him that.

It was the second time in three days that Antony had scored the winner. In midweek, he got a superb second when Betis beat Fiorentina in the first leg of the Conference League semi-final, putting them within touching distance of a first European final, and him within reach of two continental winners’ medals in a season. “I’ve trained with him a thousand times and he’s never scored with his right foot,” David de Gea said. This time it came with his left, just as Manuel Pellegrini had requested, which was why he ran to embrace his coach, laughing. It also confirmed that Betis will play European football for a fifth consecutive season, a club record, and kept them within a point of a Champions League place – which would be their first in 20 years.

But it wasn’t just that, it is all of it: the 77 touches, the five shots, the energy, the creativity, the constant threat. The commitment too: only one Betis player makes more recoveries. It is the fun, the talent, the sense of superiority: at times he can look just too good. The feeling that says:what’s a player like him doing here? A sense of place, belonging: what felt bizarre before feels right now. “Pellegrini has given me a lot of confidence,” Antony said, and he has given it back. Above all, it is the transformation, his and theirs.

“It seemed like everything was a disaster,” Pellegrini said. The point of course that it wasn’t, that people were losing the plot, and when he’s asked what he has changed Betis’s coach always gives the same answer: nothing. But even he knows that’s not entirely true. Calling it a crisis might have been a bit much but when Antony joined, Betis had picked up seven out of 27 points and had been knocked out of the cup, 5-1 by Barcelona. They had lost more games than they had won and if they were still only five points from fifth, there were seven teams between them and that place. One of those was Sevilla, for goodness sake. Nor did they know then that fifth would provide Champions League qualification; Athletic, in fourth, were 14 points away.

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For Antony things weren’t much better. In fact they were a whole lot worse. Betis paid a €2m loan fee for a player who hadn’t started a Premier League game. He had made 14 appearances in total, two of his three starts coming in the League Cup, had not provided an assist and had scored just once – against Barnsley. Since then, he has played 20 games for Betis, scored seven, given four assists and won a penalty. In his 13 league games, Betis’s record reads: won nine, lost two, drawn two. If he hasn’t been Spain’s best player, it might only be because his new best friend, Isco, has: since Isco’s return in December, he has made 14 starts, scored eight, provided six and played with a smooth mastery like no one else, except perhaps Pedri.

Real Sociedad 0-0 Athletic Bilbao, Espanyol 1-2 Real Betis, Sevilla 2-2 Leganés, Real Madrid 3-2 Celta Vigo, Valladolid 1-2 Barcelona, Las Palmas 2-3 Valencia, Villarreal 4-2 Osasuna, Alavés 0-0 Atlético, Rayo Vallecano 1-0 Getafe.

Monday Girona v Mallorca.

They couldn’t be happier together, two men for whom Betis was, in Isco’s words, “the light in the darkness”, their resurrection, a home they have made their own. There is a reason he called the Brazilian Antonio of Triana – the most emblematic and bético of the city’s barrios. “Isco is a crack,” Antony says. “Antony’s a brilliant player and an incredible person,” Isco says. “I’m happy to be able to enjoy him; he has surprised us all because of the humility he turned up with, the desire to help and we’ve all felt a change since he came.” There are others of course – Johnny Cardoso stands out for a start, new arrival Cucho Hernández too – but together those two have transformed Betis, European semi-finalists and statistically the second-best team in Spain in 2025 behind Barcelona.

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“Antony is a special case,” Pellegrini says. “You don’t just pay €100m for a player by chance. He came here convinced that he had to mature – the last year at United might have given him some of that – and he has talent to spare. Producing two or three really important things per gameshows the player he is more than doing strange things on the ball. He is focused on finishing moves well, being practical: good deliveries, looking for shots, helping the collective. Our style has suited him. I’m happy for him; it was a difficult time for him but he showed his bravery by coming here and took it as a personal challenge.”

Everyone is so enamoured that the challenge now is to find a way to hold on somehow, anyhow. “We have to enjoy this and then we will see,” Joaquín says, but this is too good to just let go. They have to do whatever it takes to keep him. “Even,” Isco says, “if it’s just for one more year,” even if it means kidnapping him. It is what all of them want, Antony especially: now playing with the best people, illuminated again in the city of lights. “When the opportunity arose to come to Betis, my head was already here. In my heart, I was sure I would be happy, and every day I see that this was the best decision I could have made,” he says. “I love the club, the city, everything. The sunshine, the people, the food: it reminds me of Brazil. And the most important thing of all is that here I have found myself.”