The fifth time was the charm

At last. Girona went up to the First Division and did so in the fifth promotion promotion they were contesting, the third in a row. Until now playing a ‘play off’ was a synonym of disappointment, of failure. And it is that the rojiblanco team had never risen through promotion: in 2013 he fell in the final against Almería, in 2016 he lost to Osasuna and in 2020 and 2021 he kneeled cruelly against Elche and Rayo Vallecano. The only promotion to First Division had come directly, after being second in the 2016-2017 season. Until today.

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Goodbye to the curse of being the only club that had lost more than one final (4) since the ‘play off’ is played under the current format (2010-2011). Because with or without a crown, Girona is by far the ‘king’, the team that has won the most finals. With five, they are ahead of Real Valladolid (two finals won out of two) and UD Las Palmas, Huesca and Elche (one out of two). And it was, along with Real Zaragoza, the only club that had played promotion three times or more and had never risen to the First Division this way.

The final against Tenerife has also been the fifth consecutive of the promotion that has been resolved between the fifth and the sixth classified from the regular league. In 2018 and 2019 he climbed the fifth (Real Valladolid and Mallorca) and in 2020 and 2021 he climbed the sixth (Elche and Rayo Vallecano, both against Girona, in Montilivi). Now Míchel’s have also done it by going in the sixth train car.

So what the precedents of this course gave advantage to the fifth, and Tenerife that had won in the two clashes of the regular league (2-1 at the Heliodoro Rodríguez López and 0-1 at Montilivi) and who resisted (0-0) in the first leg of the final. But Girona ended up clinging to their state of mind and, as they did in Ipurua against an Eibar team that also won their two league games, they signed a victory at the Heliodoro that is already part of the history of the Catalan club.

As historical it is Cristhian Stuani. The Uruguayan, who will turn 36 in October, was decisive once again, scoring his goal number 106 with the Girona shirt (in 176 games) and thus surpassing the legendary Arcadi Camps. This season he has scored 23 of the team’s 59 goals and since he arrived in 2017 from Middelsbrough his average scorer is 0.6 goals per game. Brutal.

THE ‘CHICHARRERO’ GAFE

Tenerife, on the other hand, which was looking for the fifth promotion in its history, came face to face with reality. His cross, receiving the first goal in a match at the Heliodoro Rodríguez López, something that has become a difficult barrier to overcome in recent years for a team that has without coming back from a match to win at their stadium since May 2019.

Since the chicharrero team turned a derby against UD Las Palmas more than three years ago he has not managed to win any game on the island that he started losing. He has conceded the first goal at the Heliodoro Rodríguez López in 22 league games, which resulted in a balance of 4 draws and 18 losses.

The arrival of Luis Miguel Ramis to the Canarian bench, in November 2020, has failed to bury this grim statistic. With the coach from Tarragona, on 13 occasions Tenerife was losing at some point in his stadium, games that ended with 3 draws and 10 losses.