“Elche is competing very well on his return to Primera”

Granada is a good mirror for Elche. The Andalusians, beyond the pique inherited from that promotion of promotion to the First Division in 2011, form a team that has settled in the privileged area of ​​the table. Is it so competing in the Europa League, for the first time in its history, and right now they are seventh in the leaderboard. At the technician's job Diego Martinez and her wardrobe is the key to success, but also in the management carried out by its sports director Fran Sánchez, ex from Elche.

Fran Sánchez worked for Elche, from the silence, in his previous stage in the First Division. Especially active in the 2014/15 season, where he was always next to the then sports director Victor Orta and the technical secretary Emilio vega, collaborating as legal advisor for the sports area. He completed a professional master's degree with both of them and the three of them gained a close friendship that still lasts despite time and distance. That project aimed at something similar to what is currently the Pomegranate. After two campaigns in First; three years of work with the same coach, Fran Scribe; and with players of great luster in the squad, Elche was preparing to take the leap to aspire to more ambitious levels than permanence. The rest is history.

That Administrative decline in the summer of 2015 tore everything into a thousand pieces. There were just a couple of players left, a new manager and the broken hearts of Elche fans. Criticism raged against the managers. Fran Sánchez continued working in that hard moment after the descent of Primera, together with Ramon Planes, and in the middle of the following campaign he decided to leave in January 2016, during the Chuti Molina as sports director, bound for Granada. The Andalusian team was bottom in First, in that season of Paco Jémez, Lucas Alcaraz and Tony Adams, plus a wardrobe of multiple nationalities and little union to row for permanence.

The Oriolano, Graduated in Law and with an MBA in Sports Entities Management, He will complete four years at Granada in January, with a balance of promotion, a long stay in the First Division and a historic qualification for the Europa League. The results are visible to all. For Fran Sánchez, Sunday's game will be “very special”. He returns to what was his home for two and a half seasons, and of which he keeps a great memory.

At Martínez Valero he still has many friends: Jorge Pérez, Antonio Chaves, Quique Cano, Fidel Martínez, Miguel Ángel Real, Sonia Arcos, José Luis Moltó, Silvia Castro, Rubens Hernández, José Francisco Villalgordo… They were all part of that family from which he separated, but who maintains contact from a distance and rejoices, each in his own way, of the successes of Elche. Luis Casas has been taken from that team to Granada, who was also part of the technical secretariat of Elche and, after finalizing his relationship with Albacete, he joined the Nasrid club this past summer.

Now, with 31 years old and a son from Granada, Fran Sánchez sees an “exciting” project in Elche and he is aware that on Sunday “it will not be easy” to score at the Martínez Valero stadium. “Elche is a team that is competing very well on its return to the First Division”, he points out from Granada, just before taking the suitcases to travel to Greece and be present in tomorrow's game, in the Europa League, against PAOK Almost without touching the wall, then you will have to get back on the bus to return to Elche, where Sunday will be lived an interesting duel, sentimentally and sportingly.