Malaga have returned to Spain's top flight, La Liga, after dropping as low as the regionalised third tier of Spanish football, a fall triggered by mismanagement following the club's promising Champions League run in 2013. Their revival matters because it marks the recovery of a club once seen as a potential challenger to Spain's "big three" of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, and follows a familiar pattern of storied Spanish clubs falling into financial ruin before clawing their way back with the backing of loyal supporters.

Malaga's decline followed the exit of manager Manuel Pellegrini and star player Isco in 2013, after which a Uefa financial fair play ban, mounting debts and a court-ordered removal of owner Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser Al Thani for alleged misappropriation of funds sent the club spiralling. Relegation from La Liga came in 2018, and by 2023 a threadbare squad, reliant on free transfers and loans under court-appointed administrator Jose Maria Munoz, had slipped into Spain's notoriously hard-to-escape third division, known as "el pozo" (the well). A squad built largely from youth-team players and local lads won promotion at the first attempt, beating Gimnastic Tarragona in a play-off, before securing a second promotion back to La Liga, celebrations that reportedly drew an estimated 185,000 fans to a parade in June.