With a promotion at stake that is expected to be especially expensive this year, this Sunday will not be just any game. An Albacete that, no matter how covered it is, is a candidate for promotion and will be supported by thousands of displaced fans, will put Levante to the test in the most difficult moment of the Calleja era. The granotas will have to demonstrate in a match of maximum difficulty that what happened in Huesca was an accident. A victory would dispel all doubt, while a setback would increase the distance with the direct promotion places and would definitely add the fight to the La Mancha team.
Some sources speak of up to 4,000 Albacete fans in Orriols. Being difficult to measure if there will really be so many, what is certain is that It will be a massive displacement for which a parade to the Ciutat has already been organized. This forces the Levantine movement to give everything to counteract the effect of the visiting fans, from which Levante himself already benefited at Carlos Belmonte. In that match, Calleja’s fourth, the victory was achieved against an ‘Alba’ who sold his skin at a very high price and demonstrated his ability to score goals on the counterattack. Despite the absence of Higinio, the visiting team will stand at the granota coliseum with the band of top scorer in the category with 39 goals, the same as Granada and Alavés. A major challenge for the Levantine defense, which continues to suffer casualties but recovers the option of Iborra as a center back.
An optimistic rival
Having met the initial goal of 50 points to ensure permanence, Albacete has already taken off its mask. He is no longer a recently promoted but one more contender in the same war that the Levant is waging, which is none other than promotion. With the difference that for the granotas it is an obligation and for the whites a dream in which there is not the same pressure.
Rubén Albés, technician of the ‘Mechanical Cheese’, did not hide the intentions with which he will travel in his press conference yesterday: «We will go to the Ciutat de València to win. As we have gone to all the fields». If he succeeds, he will be one point behind the Barça team with the average tied or won. In fact, despite the streak of twenty games without losing that Levante had, Albacete has cut two points in the partial of the last ten days. It has been earned on its own merits that the list of applicants is expanded to six and the high scoring rate of the noble zone invites us to think that it may be necessary to win more than half of the remaining twelve games. A challenge for the brave in the path of a squad that has shown throughout the season that it is prepared to take it on.
What will come next, in fact, is very hard. Although March will be completed against three rivals from the lower zone, they will later arrive Eibar, Las Palmas and Alavés in three of the four games in April. Many things are at stake in a final stretch of aúpa that begins this Sunday in the Ciutat. Team and fans must remain united after the Huesca coup in a real test of fire.
