Most fans outside of the LaLiga bubble probably couldn’t tell you more than one player who has played for Celta Vigo this past decade, and that one player just so happens to be one of the best all-around center forwards in the world, Iago Aspas.
But Celta Vigo have always been a solid team in the Spanish top flight. Beyond Aspas, they’ve produced several players who have been among the best in the league in their respective roles.
Nolito used to be quite the attacking partner for Aspas, then, most recently, Brais Mendez was, too, before becoming a legitimate LaLiga Player of the Season contender with Real Sociedad.
Even in more underrated positions, Celta Vigo have gotten great seasons out of players like defensive midfielder Renato Tapia a couple of years back, when he was neck-and-neck with Real Madrid’s Casemiro as the top performing defensive midfielder in LaLiga.
Last season, Celta Vigo had one of the best center backs in Spanish football, too, in Carl Starfelt, who I bet 99 percent of the people reading this article have never heard of.
Now this season, it looks like Celta Vigo have unearthed an even bigger gem, except, this time, it’s a player I bet 99 percent of the true LaLiga fans reading this article have heard of – that would be former Barcelona defender Oscar Mingueza.
If you watched Mingueza at Barcelona, then “special” would not be the word you’d use to describe him. To start his first-team career with the Blaugrana, Mingueza did have some solid moments.
He even started 23 games in his first season with Barcelona in the 2020/21 season. The problem is that Barca had to phase him out of the lineup because he was too slow defensively, getting burned to a crisp by actual top wingers in LaLiga, especially Vinicius Junior.
Mingueza eventually made his way out of the club, which is the eventual pattern for every talented prospect at Barcelona or Real Madrid that isn’t quite talented enough to make it as even a regular in the first-team rotation.
The Spaniard landed at another notable LaLiga club in Celta Vigo in 2022/23. He wasn’t all that hot, but he wasn’t all that bad either, starting 13 games in his first season.
Mingueza would parlay that into a regular role with more than 30 starts last season, but at no point did you get the sense that the young defender would be anything more than a serviceable LaLiga starter for Celta Vigo, the definition of a mid-table team.
Yet out of nowhere, to start the 2024/25 season, Oscar Mingueza has been on a torrid pace. He’s made starts on the left and right side of the formation, with Celta Vigo utilizing him further up the pitch as a wide midfielder in a 3-4-3 formation with a pretty formidable trio of Iago Aspas, Jonathan Bamba, and Borja Iglesias up top.
And crazily enough, Mingueza has more goal contributions than all of them, even Aspas. Through four LaLiga starts, Mingueza has two goals and three assists, putting up the kind of numbers not even the Real Madrid superstars are producing – and he’s doing it as, essentially, a wing back.
Mingueza came into Matchday 4 against Osasuna with 1.7 tackles per game and added two blocked shots in another positive defensive performance against the 2023 Copa del Rey finalists.
Who would have seen this coming three years ago? Nobody who watched Barcelona from 2020-2022 would have expected Mingueza, a seemingly limited player on the ball, to become an offensive output maven at Celta Vigo in 2024/25. It was unthinkable.
But that’s the magic of LaLiga. You forget how high the standard is at a club at Barcelona, how talented the prospects are who graduate from the Blaugrana, and what they can develop into in just a few years with another quality side in the Spanish top flight.
There is so much great football being played across the table in LaLiga. Mingueza is only 25 years old right now and entering his theoretical prime. So much depends on development and situation, and there’s a chance, if Mingueza keeps this up, that he has blossomed into one of LaLiga’s most intriguing weapons.
Actually, scratch that. Mingueza is playing so absurdly well that “intriguing weapons” almost downplays the way he is gliding past defenders and creating chances from thin air.
Through four games, he has been one of LaLiga’s best players alongside the Barcelona trio of Lamine Yamal, Raphinha, and Dani Olmo. If this is no fluke born by sample size, then Mingueza could end the season as the best player in the league. Yeah, football is crazy.
