Javier Portillo, the icing on the cake in the ascent of Rayo Vallecano

Laughter, hugs, mobiles to immortalize the moment, screams … And, among all those faces of happiness for the rise of Rayo, was Javier Portillo. The Real Madrid youth squad joined to the franjirroja technical secretariat last December and since then he has been working alongside an old acquaintance, the sporting director David Cobeño —Also with a white past—, Rubén Reyes and Emiliano Armenteros. The goal was promote this plot in case the leap to the elite was made as it has finally happened.

The former striker was exulting on the Montilivi lawn and has celebrated as one more the return of the Rayista club to First, two seasons later. His involvement has been total from the first moment he landed in Vallecas. Back he left his stage in Hercules, an entity in which he served as sports director once he hung up his boots in 2015. Throughout those three and a half years he saw his team play two finals, against Cádiz (15-16) and Ponferradina (18-19), but finally did not manage to go up to Second. Nevertheless, it is still linked to the Alicante entity of which it owns shares.

Javi Portillo smiles again in his city, Madrid. And it should be remembered that, wearing the white shirt, became the fashion squad during the time of the galactics. He did, nothing more and nothing less, that fifteen goals with the subsidiary (01-02), which opened the doors of the first team the following season (02-03), in which he played ten league games (205 minutes) and scored five goals. More minutes had in 03-04 (393). Subsequently, he played in Fiorentina, Brujas, Nàstic, Osasuna, Hercules and Las Palmas.

The march of Rubén Reyes towards the sports management of Oviedo leaves pending a restructuring of the technical area, “which will be addressed in the next few days”, as confirmed by President Raúl Martín Presa in As. Already in some interviews, the owner of Rayo pointed to the great knowledge of Portillo in Second B, as one of his strengths in this new adventure. “It is a category with a lot of football talent to discover and, in that part, we were a little lame,” he said in The Spanish.