Álvaro Fidalgo finally got on the field for Real Betis on Friday, September 4, and his first minutes of the LaLiga season came against Real Madrid in Jornada 4. Pellegrini sent him on in the 59th minute for Isco, ending a spell in which he had not played at all.
The timing mattered because Fidalgo and Iker Losada had been the only Betis players without a single minute in the league before this match. That made his appearance more than a routine substitution. It marked a return for a player who had been stuck on the outside while Betis tried to sort out minutes in a crowded area of the squad.
Why he had not been used was clear enough. Pellegrini said Fidalgo had been sidelined by a knee injury, and that explained the stretch on the bench without an appearance. The injury kept him out of several previous matches, so the first question was never whether he could be trusted in one game, but whether he was finally healthy enough to rejoin the rotation at all.
Even so, the return did not settle his place in the squad. The transfer market in LaLiga had already closed, and that made Fidalgo’s future at Betis more uncertain rather than less. With Dani Ceballo already part of the picture and other players able to compete for the same role, one substitute appearance did not erase the competition around him.
That is why the 59th minute matters beyond the scoreline. Fidalgo has his first minutes of the season now, and Betis has the clearest sign yet that the knee issue is no longer keeping him completely out. What remains open is whether those minutes become the start of a run or just a brief return before the squad picture tightens again.
