BLURB
Sporting had returned after three years, embarking upon their fourth primera season in 17 years, and they had begun it with a 0-0 draw against Real Madrid “ only the second newly-promoted team ever to get anything from them on the opening day
AGENCIES
GIJON
“We’re back,” declared the mosaic engulfing the stand at Spain’s oldest football ground, down at one end of the San Lorenzo bay where the Piles river meets the sea. They shouldn’t have been. Starting this season in the country’s regionalised, theoretically amateur Second Division B with its four groups, 80 teams and long, torturous road back to the world of professional football once looked more likely than starting it in the First Division.
Not starting it at all had seemed frighteningly possible too. Yet here they were: still alive, back in primera and now, somehow, just seconds away from doing it again. Well, their coach did claim: “Sporting Gijón are revolutionary, like Asturias.”It was heading into the 94th minute and the resistance was almost over, relieved exhaustion ready to take over. Amid the din, the camera panned to the Sporting bench where a kitman hesitated, tempted but not quite daring to prepare a sprint on to the pitch. From behind, someone nudged him: go on. When the whistle went a moment later, he did. A roar went up and players collapsed. Sporting had returned after three years, embarking upon their fourth primera season in 17 years, and they had begun it with a 0-0 draw against Real Madrid “ only the second newly-promoted team ever to get anything from them on the opening day. “Epic,” one local paper called it.
“Effort, sacrifice, work rate, humility and solidarity have overcome Madrid’s talent and millions,” said Sporting’s goalkeeper Pichu Cuéllar proudly.
It was the fifth time in nine games under Rafa BenÃtez that Madrid had failed to score but Cuéllar, a 31-year-old who began his career at Atlético and is now in his eighth season at Sporting, had faced more than 20 shots and had saved his share too. For much of the second half it had been relentless, if chaotic. Cristiano Ronaldo alone had more shots than Sporting. “It was not the Molinón, it was the Alamo,” commented Santi Giménez. But, read the headline in AS, “Laying siege is not winning”; as the Republican prime minister Juan NegrÃn famously claimed towards the end of the civil war, on the other hand, resisting sometimes is. Sporting had a draw that “tastes like victory,” said their coach Abelardo Fernández. They also had a point he called “unexpected”.
“Unexpected” is the word. Impressive would be another, maybe even miraculous. And not just for this result; not even for this result, perhaps. It is some achievement. None of Sporting’s players commanded a transfer fee, five of them were playing in primera for the first time and at an average age of 23.5 years they have the youngest squad in the first division. They have made just three signings this summer, all on loan, and the team that started on Sunday night included only one player who wasn’t in the second division with them two months ago “ the 19-year-old Paraguayan Antonio Sanabria, on loan from Roma, whose header came down off the bar and on to the last millimetre of the line.
But the point is not that this is basically the squad that came up from the second division “ the three loanees are Antonio Sanabria, Omar Mascarell and Alen Halilovic “ or not only that; it is that this is the squad that should not have come up from the second division, or so they said. Never mind this season, at the start of last season the target was survival. And survival really meant survival. In fact, even survival might not have meant survival: promotion, by uncontemplated contrast, did. In a fascinating interview with Eduardo Castelao in El Mundo on the eve of this new season, Abelardo admitted: “If we hadn’t gone up, I don’t know where the club would be.”
The worrying truth is: it might not have been at all. During one press conference last season, he had declared: “We’re playing for our fucking lives.” As their campaign got under way, the president of the league Javier Tebas had named them as one of the clubs at risk of going out of business. In administration and in more than €30m of debt, with no way to generate real income, they could not sign anyone. Anyone on decent money had to be let go. Abelardo had taken over for the final four weeks of the previous season and was considered inexperienced “ 44 years old “ and a risk.
