ANDthe only champion of League who is out of professional soccer fights to return to it. He Sports It competes for the third consecutive season in bronze football, but the loyalty of its fans is golden. Just surpassed 25,000 subscriberssells out more than 1,200 tickets to visit the Cultural Leonesa in a matter of an hour and is close to hanging the sign that there are no tickets to receive Castilla. This is sportsmanship.
Colors are passed from parent to child. Those who are now 40 years old have experienced the best stage of the club. Was league champion in 2000of the King’s Cups of 1995 and 2002 -that of the Centenariazo, against Real Madrid at the Bernabéu-, and of three Super Cups (1995, 2000 and 2002). It matters little, at least on a social level, that he now plays in First Federation.
Abanca, a Galician financial institution, gives it financial support. He is its majority shareholder. And the hubbywhich has lost control of the club -before distributed among thousands of shareholders-, does the rest. It has not allowed him to rise in recent years, but in the current one he is once again opposing LaLiga SmartBank.
Those who join Deportivo confirm this social ‘miracle’. Óscar Cano is his current coach. “In A Coruña you don’t see a Madrid or Barça shirt”assured in his first days in charge of a bench that began the season with Borja Jiménez as a tenant. An exaggerated thought, perhaps, but it is not far from reality either..
Deportivo is, by far, the reference team in A Coruña. It has more social mass than many of LaLiga Santander and Second Division. It is in the national top 10. Its stadium registers better entries than in some matches in the highest category. “It is a club that represents the sentiment of thousands and thousands of sportsmen who make up a ‘First’ fans, who flock to our stadium, Abanca-Riazor, a field with dimensions and history also of ‘First’ every day” , explains to Efe its president, Antonio Couceiroformer minister of the Xunta de Galicia, the man whom Abanca has placed in charge of the team.
He affirms that Deportivo has “robust, deep-rooted values, which translate into great loyalty to the colors and to the entity, even though its first teams, both male and female, are currently in the First Federation.” Couceiro admits that the fans are the “main backbone” of Deportivo, capable of responding “to the challenges presented by the current situation.” “From the Club we consider that it constitutes our greatest strength to return to compete sustainably in professional football,” he warns.
Gelines Romero, director of the club’s social area, supports, in statements to Efe, that statement: “We are clear that sportsmanship is the soul and heart of the club, our reason for being and doing things.” He boasts that “one more season” they are “breaking records for season ticket holders, for average attendance at the stadium, both in the Riazor and in all fields where sportsmanship is present.”
a special week
This week has been crazy. It exceeded 25,000 subscribers, sold “more than 1,200 tickets in one hour” to visit the Kingdom of León next week and is planning to make “the first ‘sold out’ of the season against Real Madrid Castilla”. One of the keys to having reached so many subscribers was the proposal to reduce the price by 50% for the smallest members of the house compared to last year. That “is already”, in the words of Gelines Romero, “his future hobby of him, the sportsmanship of tomorrow”. The ‘Blue and White DNA’. “This initiative has resulted in a 50% increase in underage season ticket holders compared to the previous season. We can say with capital letters that sportsmanship continues to be a social benchmark in regards to the world of football”, he sentenced.
A sportsmanship that runs in the blood and that also spreads through the Federation of Supporters Clubs. Its president, Luis Alberto Martínez, explained to Efe that “teams are not made great by the category in which they play, but by the support of their fans. In very few places do people have that degree of belonging that we feel here. El Dépor He has a ‘Champions’ fandom.”
He participated in the top continental competition for five consecutive years and reached the semifinals in 2004, almost 19 years ago. Now his Champions League is that of the hobbies. Sportsmanship has not turned its back on him while he awaits the reward of, at the very least, a promotion.
