Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a bigger club that still gets treated like a small club than Real Betis. Year after year, they are in the hunt for Champions League football, and just last year, they made it to the Conference League Final against Chelsea.
Some of the biggest legends of Spanish football have come through Betis, such as Joaquin, and reigning Champions League winner Fabian Ruiz actually got his first breakout with Real Betis…alongside a certain Real Madrid center midfielder by the name of Dani Ceballos.
Real Betis have designs on making it back to the Champions League this season, but who are the main protagonists leading the charge after the Verdiblancos finished sixth in the league last season?
I’ll take you through the five players I think you should know this season and discuss them a little bit.
Note: The list doesn’t include Antony, since he has not officially signed a permanent deal with Real Betis from Manchester United…yet.
CB Marc Bartra
Marc Bartra is now a grizzled veteran of La Liga, and for anyone who feels old hearing that. Look, I feel you. It seems like it was just yesterday I watched Gareth Bale blow by Bartra in the Copa del Rey Final or read his horrific account of how the Borussia Dortmund team bus was literally attacked.
Now, Bartra is the seasoned vet in the city of Seville, manning the center back position and putting some of the best forwards in La Liga on lockdown. He’s taken the mantle from Ricardo Carvalho, Sergio Ramos, and Raul Albiol as the latest war general at the back.
Every non-Big 3 team in contention for Champions League places in the Spanish top flight needs a guy like Bartra, because, well, this league is now built on having a nasty edge; it’s not the free-flowing football of the 2010s when even the lower-table teams would try to put three past Real Madrid or Barcelona.
Bartra is equal parts savvy and strength at this stage of his career, and he knows enough about the dark arts to skate that fine line when he does get booked. He’s a good athlete, a good passer of the ball, and just genuinely good at everything a center back needs to do without being great in one area. But qualitiy is additive, not averaged, and all those traits add up to Bartra legitimately being one of the best central defenders in La Liga today.
AM Giovani Lo Celso
All of Giovani Lo Celso’s best seasons have come in La Liga, and the best of those best seasons have come in his two stints at Real Betis, including last season when a revived 28-year-old Lo Celso stepped right back into the Benito Villamarin like he never left.
But, alas, Lo Celso did leave, though it’s worht noting that his first club in European football after leaving Argentina powerhouse Roasrio Central was actually PSG.
He was pretty decent in Paris with seven goal contributions from midfield, but he didn’t break out until his move to Betis, where he scored 9 goals with 4 assists in La Liga and 5 goals in 6 games as one of the best players in the 2018/19 Europa League tournament.
Lo Celso parlayed all of that into a move to Premier League giants Tottenham, who were coming off an appearance in the Champions League Final, but the grass didn’t prove to be greener.
After a fairly average spell at Villarreal and with no place in the Tottenham squad, Lo Celso made his way back to Real Betis last summer, fresh off a winning assist in the Copa America Final.
And that assist must have been a harbinger of what was to come, because, again, it was like Lo Celso never left. He had 8 goals and 3 assists in 15 starts and 10 substitute appearances, and you can only imagine what he would have been capable of as a goal-scorer from midfield if he never went down with an injury in the middle of the season.
When you average out his numbers to per 90 statistics, Lo Celso had 2.3 key passes and 3.0 fouls drawn, which is in a world-class bracket of production. Lo Celso is one of the most underrated playmakers of his generation, and I, for one, am glad he’s back in La Liga.
CM Pablo Fornals
Real Betis have a tradition of playmaking talent, including Sergio Canales and the incomparable Nabil Fekir – seriously, he was a top-five player in this league at his peak – standing out in recent years.
And now, Real Betis have three of them. With so many mouths to feed, the versatile Pablo Fornals, who can also play on the wings or as an 8 or 10, has been kicked back to a more center midfield position behind Lo Celso in the 10 role to start the 2025/26 season.
Fornals has one of the most underrated goal catalogues of the last 10 years of the Premier League, as the 29-year-old Spaniard had a pretty darn good career for West Ham from 2019 to 2023 after being one of the last vestiges of Malaga’s glory days of the 2010s and then assisting 12 for Villarreal a year later.
He’s back to being a solid cog in the wheel in La Liga, as he had 5 goal contributions, 1.5 key passes per game, 1.6 tackles per game, and 1.5 interceptions per game last season.
Fornals is keeping up the tradition of playmakers moving back later in their careers at Real Betis and maturing into registas, and I think Fornals always had a little bit of that pitbull fight in him in the middle of the park, which is serving him well in his current capacity.
AM Isco
Isco’s latest injury isn’t just a tough blow to Real Betis, but it’s also a blow for anyone who just genuinely loves watching a world-class player with no pressure on his back going to work and doing what he loves.
There’s no doubt that Isco was a highly successful player for Real Madrid, and he did step up his game big-time from Malaga to Madrid, becoming a serial Champions League winner and one of the most uncatchable players on the ball because of his agility, quickness, and nearly flawless close control. And my goodness, remember his curling shots?
Isco wasn’t loving his football by the time his career at Real Madrid came to a close, and even the coach who helped turn him into a monster at the Santiago Bernabeu, Zinedine Zidane, seemed to sour on him and saw that Isco didn’t have the same drive to do the work of a Madrid player.
At Real Betis, Isco gets to be the new Fekir. He doesn’t have to defend – but, ironically enough, he actually does it now – and he gets to have the ball at his feet whenever he wants, feeling central to a team again.
Isco’s stardom as the 10 pushes Lo Celso out, but it was worth it last season. He was one of the best players in La Liga again, and you can argue that he outperformed all the playmakers at Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Atletico Madrid with 9 goals and 8 assists in only 1,552 minutes while averaging 2.8 key passes and 2.0 fouls drawn per game. He’s still world-class.
CB Natan
Real Betis wanted to add one more quality piece to their defense the previous summer, and it looks like they’ve gotten the perfect, aggressive young complement next to Marc Bartra.
Natan can learn from Bartra and become one of La Liga’s top center backs in his own right if all goes well. The 24-year-old Brazilian only started 11 games for Napoli in his first year in Europe after Brazil, but he started 23 in just his first campaign with the Verdiblancos.
He was a wall. Natan was almost never dribbled past statistically last season, meaning he barely had to make an intervention. And he was better than advertised on the ball, too, completing around 90 percent of his passes.
Natan is going to take a big leap forward in year two. He’s still a few years away from his prime as a center back, and, on paper, Real Betis should have one of the best central defensive partnerships in La Liga between Natan and Bartra.
Joe Soriano is the editor of The Trivela Effect and a FanSided Hall of Famer who has covered world football since 2010. He’s led top digital communities like The Real Champs (Real Madrid) and has run sites covering Tottenham, Liverpool, Juventus, and Schalke. He also helped manage NFL Spin Zone and Daily DDT, covering the NFL and pro wrestling.