Tomorrow's visit to Old Trafford is just a small stop on the road to glory that the Royal is traveling hand in hand with Imanol Sheriff. Under Orio's coach, the txuri urdin team qualified to play in the Europa League last July, three years after doing so for the last time in 2017, but the continental adventure comes to an end tomorrow, which does not mean that the great emotions are over. La Real, and their coach, face the decisive stretch of the championship with the double challenge of being champions again 34 years later and obtaining a place in European competitions for the second consecutive season.
Imanol He is less than 40 days away from becoming the fourth coach to win a title in Real's history. The two leagues and the Super Cup won with Alberto Ormaetxea and the 1987 Copa del Rey under the command of John
Toshack are, with permission from the Second Division championships and the Cup obtained with Berraondo At the dawn of the twentieth century, the main landmarks that adorn the list of the Royal. Sheriff has an unbeatable opportunity to inscribe your name in gold letters on it.
Path to optimism
Some of the tracks in his career open a certain margin for optimism. With Sunday's victory against Alavés, Imanol he became the eighth coach in the club's history to reach 50 official victories (40 in the League, 8 in the Cup and 2 in the Europa League). No coach had done it since John
Toshack He achieved it in September 1987, at the beginning of his third season as Txuri Urdin coach. A couple of months before he had been proclaimed champion in Zaragoza. The previous coach to add fifty games won with Real was Alberto Ormaetxea, who joined them in April 1980, in his second year on the Atotxa bench. A year later he would win the first League in the history of the Royal. Imanol he travels the same route that his two legendary colleagues traveled before and, after matching his first fifty victories, he wants to extend the account in the most precious, the Cup final against Athletic, and emulate them in that way also making Real champion.
Very low loss percentage
Count the team of ImanolFurthermore, with an attribute that distinguishes him from the coaches who have directed the txuri urdin team on more occasions. Like all those who choose to be champions, it has a remarkable percentage of games won. The Real de Alguacil has won more than 45% of the matches it has played, only surpassed by that of Benedict
Diaz and of Ormaetxea. But it is also that this Real also loses little. In the 'top ten' of coaches who have directed the most matches, only Ormaetxea can boast of having lost less than 27.92% of matches that the squad led by the Orio coach has yielded. An unbeatable starting point to dream of lifting a trophy again.
Tomorrow's game at Old Trafford was, a priori, an unbeatable opportunity for Imanol to magnify his legend but he will have to wait just over a month to achieve it, on April 3 at La Cartuja against Athletic. Before that, he will have to manage the four league games prior to the final (Real Madrid, Levante, Granada and Barcelona) with solvency to maintain his aspiration to qualify for a European competition for the second consecutive season. If he succeeds, he will also be the third coach in the club's history to do so. Can you imagine who made it before? Ormaetxea Y Toshack. Imanol travel the same path of champions.
