40 years have passed and no one in San Sebastián forgets where he was or what he was doing that afternoon when Real Sociedad won its first league title at the Molinón stadium in Gijón with Zamora's agonizing goal in the 89th minute. he knows where he was that day ”, recalls one of the heroes of that April 26, 1981, the lateral July
Olaizola.
The txuri urdin team raised the League 80-81 on the last day, tying 45 points with Real Madrid (in those leagues in which the victories were two points), with 19 victories, 7 draws, 8 defeats and being with differentiates the team less thrashed in the championship.
By then eleven was made up of the mythical Arconada, Celayeta, Górriz, Kortabarria, Olaizola, Diego, Alonso, Zamora, Idygoras, Satrústegui, Y Lopez
Ufarte, a campus without foreigners, a team “recruited from the province.”
One of the indisputable pieces of that league was July
Olaizola, a winger who played 2,970 minutes in 33 games that season, absent in just one game and received only one yellow card in the entire championship.
“Fight until the last moment and fight until the end”, was, as indicated Olaizola, the main virtue of a team that on the last day of the league and with two minutes remaining in regulation time, saw the title slip away due to lack of a goal.
The success of the team is attributed to the winning gene of the squad, its perseverance, and especially to the day to day, not wanting to think beyond the next match, old ways of the “game by game”.
“We did not want to think beyond one game. When we win that game we will think about the next one, and in the meantime we won't. And for another, and for another, and for another “, he recalls Olaizola.
The winning gene of the txuriurdin team was forged over several seasons. Impossible not to remember the 79-80 campaign: “Last season, that was extraordinary. Real Sociedad never played as well as that season ”.
That 79-80 league forged the competitive character of the players: “We went out onto the field and we knew we were not going to lose, we were convinced that we were not going to lose. With great concentration on everything we did, opposing a great difficulty to the contrary. We came out confident that we won. If we scored a goal, we won ”.
La Real broke records, its unbeaten record for 38 days has only been surpassed by F.C. Barcelona in 2018.
With that last season flying over the heads of the players, the txuri urdin appeared on the last day of the 80-81 League in El Molinón de Gijón 40 years ago with the advantage of one point against Real Madrid and the golaverage in favor, with what a tie was enough to materialize the feat.
The game started in favor, with a penalty to Lopez
Ufarte for Real Sociedad in minute 7 which transformed Inaxio
Kortabarria, but in minute 44 and at the beginning of the second half, Sporting turned the score around with goals from Manolo
Table.
Protagonist of that mythical play, at the limit of regulation time Olaizola He picked up a rejection from the sportinguista defense and started the play that would end up being the history of the Real. Opening to Alonso, center, reject, attempted shot of Górriz and goal of Zamora.
Upon receiving the winger, he remembers a fleeting thought that crossed his mind, a lesson that his coach gave him one day Alberto
Ormaetxea and that changed the future txuri urdin: “The vertical ball benefits the defense”, a guideline that resonated in his head opportunely to make the correct decision to give it to Parakeet
Alonso.
He remembers the final whistle of that game at the Molinón with great joy, but also with a great feeling of relief for removing the slab that the team had carried since last season.
Olaizola recognizes that today he is “unable” to finish the reports of that time because of the emotion they generate. Memories of a time that remain in the distance “as sometimes it seems that they have never happened.”
Still today there are people who stop him on the street to tell him that they remember his feat: “Let you know that I tell you from my heart and that you gave us tremendous joys, I am very grateful to your generation,” says the former player.
“Everyone knows where he was that day and he remembers it with joy,” recalls the full-back thinking that 40 years ago, that April 26, the team became an indelible history of the Royal Society.