La Real left Ramón de Carranza 10 years ago as leader of the Second Division and with a sealed half-promotion. Tomorrow he returns for the first time. At the top of the league table. An ornament to the evolution traced in a golden decade. It is the allegory of a time that was forged in Cádiz, a territory that has reserved a corner in the club's historical memory. There he definitively shed the dark age that called into question his existence. Today, the ceiling is flat. And the Real walks through the clouds.
Hence, the reunion with the ‘Silver Cup’ is magical. Tomorrow's game is not a day of walking around the house, but a journey full of symbolism. The Real that defends the leadership now barely hides similarities with the group that put the sports regeneration on track in 2010. The sports director was Loren and not Olabe; the coach responded to the name of Martin
Lasarte on a June afternoon that Imanol
Sheriff he continued on television, “like one more fan of the Real”, as he acknowledged yesterday; the star was Griezmann, Illarramendi It was two weeks away from debuting and the gunner who was unleashed was the Uruguayan Carlos
Good. The only rector who continues to hold the position then is the president, Jokin
Aperribay.
The takeoff in Cádiz is today a journey through paradise. The four qualifications to Europe achieved and the passage to the Cup final enhance the happy adventure of the Real. They are the highest sporting distinctions of a club that has broken its record of presence in Europe in the same decade. La Real got into the Champions League three years after going up to First (2013), repeated continental classification at the end of the following season, dazzled with sixth place in 2016/2017 and last July they completed a prodigious cycle.
La Real, thanks to this consolidation in the league aristocracy, has become the eighth most assiduous team in Europe in the last 10 years. Only Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético de Madrid, Sevilla, Villarreal, Valencia and Athletic have gotten into the Champions League or the Europa League more times since 2010. The first three have signed a full range of colossal scope.
Eight coaches
The current triumphal march of the Royal is understood as the achievement of a generational change that has only suffered the inevitable fissures of a changing of the guard. The heroes of the ascent gradually left. The Carlos Martinez, Mikel
Gonzalez, Markel
Bergara or Zurutuza they left a great legacy, with the retirees Tight Y Agirretxe like banners. Illarra, Zaldua, Zubeldia, Aritz
Elustondo or Oyarzabal inherited the indigenous baton and Bravo, Griezmann, Candle or Yuri from before yesterday are now Monreal, Merino, For your, Silva or Isak, signings that raise the performance bar to the top.
Eusebio's career (2015-2018) and the overflowing explosion of Imanol deactivate the excessive voltage of a bench that from Lasarte to the nonsense of Moyes it was an electric chair. Eight coaches have passed through the Real in these 10 years. A time that tomorrow will stop for 90 minutes in the Carraza. Because the reunion of the Real with Cádiz will be magical.