“More than half Massanassa has made us of Espanyol”

Just 900 meters separate Giner Street, where he discovered his passion for football by kicking the ball and haggling neighbors, and Poliesportiu street, where this friday will be honored. In its Massanassa native, on the outskirts of Valencia, Vicente Moreno is not one more among its 9,584 inhabitants. And that he tries to pass discreetly as the proud son of Sara and Vicent. This is demonstrated by the plaque that this week has been installed at the entrance of the municipal stadium, with his name all over the top.

“He was already the first winner in our Sports Gala as athlete of the year, when he played in LaLiga with Xerez. And we made him an official appointment at the City Council when he went up to First with Mallorca,” he details in conversation with AS the mayor of Massanassa. “But now, seeing that he was going up with Espanyol, we thought it was time to give the stadium its name, to give him recognition as he touches. He is already consolidated in the elite, in one of the most powerful championships on the planet. It is a recognition more than deserved“, he assures Francisco Comes, to whom from the City Council – where it takes just a minute to put him on the phone, and he was about to officiate a civil wedding – suggest that we call him Paco. Small gestures of proximity to this 8,500-square-meter municipality focused on the service sector.

With a triangular, a more familiar act in the consistory and another open to the public –“a lot of people, as many as the COVID protocol allows“, Comes points out – the official letter will be given this Friday afternoon to the Vicente Moreno Stadium, which is actually a complex with a football field with capacity for 718 spectators, other annexes, a sports hall and, two by two, tennis courts, paddle tennis courts and swimming pools.

“Vicente – or Vicent, as the mayor calls him – is a humble person, close, very valid. Success has not gone to his head. Now more than half a town has made us of Espanyol! “, he exclaims.” I am also a bit of a parakeet “, he confesses, before explaining how he gave the news to the coach:” After the promotion, I let a couple of days go by because of the fuss I would have, and I called him. I proposed it to him. And he just got excited… He is proud of his people, he shows off Massanassa “.

It is normal, according to Francisco –or Paco– Comes, see Vicente Moreno drop by his town just around this time, to coincide with the soccer holidays and with San Juan, when the Massanassa festivities are celebrated. This year he will put an insurmountable rubric, on the one hand, to his rest period; on the other, the rise that has led him to give the stadium its name. And consequently you will receive an unbeatable boost to, from Monday, command the Espanyol ship already in the First Division. “I'm sure more success will come to you“Adventure who this Friday will be the happiest mayor in the world.