The historic Ferroviaria and the Granada, united by Mingorance and Luis Martínez

The Railway Sports Associationa renowned Madrid team that caresses history hand in hand with its president Javier Puig, paid recognition last Wednesday to two of its best players ever: Luis Martinez and Jose Mingorance. The chosen setting was the Los Cármenes stadium because these two footballers played for Granada.

Both players were in the Ferro in 1957. Granada made Luis Martínez debut in the First Division first, who had the dream premiere. It was on 10-18-1959 at the old Metropolitano stadium, the former home of Atlético de Madrid. The Granadans won 0-2 with a stellar performance by Martínez, author of one of the goals. It is the only victory for Granada in the mattress feud.

A week later Mingorance, an impressive-looking centre-back, landed in Los Cármenes. From there he went to Córdoba who lived his best years. On 6-13-1963 he played his only 20 minutes with the National Team in a game against Scotland at the Santiago Bernabéu of dismal memory because the British won 2-6 with a stellar performance by Denis Law and White. The latter died a few months later struck by lightning while playing golf. Mingorance had a hard time overcoming that setback. He made it and had a good run.

La Ferroviaria had been wanting to pay tribute to these two great footballers for some time, but the circumstances of the covid delayed it. And it is that, as the Ferro explains: “This tribute is one more chapter of the determined philosophy of the Board of Directors of the AD Ferroviaria focused on giving the maximum possible diffusion to its extensive history of 103 years, given its foundation in the month of December 1918. For this reason, delving into its past chapters, such as the one corresponding to the main soccer players who wore their colors, is a job that its leaders feel as an obligation to be able to carry out, with the collaboration of the media, a dissemination of those great players who are legends for Ferro and later stood out in other teams, as in this case of Martínez and Mingorance, in Granada CF”.

Vicente del Bosque

The club also explains that Vicente Del Bosque is also involved in this historical recovery work, since the former national coach, world champion in South Africa 2010, accepted in 2019 to be the Godfather and Honorary Member of our club. Although little known, Vicente del Bosque has a close relationship with the railway because very close relatives, such as his grandfather Manuel, his father Fermín and his uncle Victorino, have been employed by it. In addition, years later he met his father-in-law, José López Padilla, who coincidentally was also a railway worker, specifically a steam locomotive engineer”.

historical recovery

The Railway Sports Association, popularly known as “la Ferro”, based in Madrid in the district of Arganzuela, played in its first stage from the 1919-20 season to 2006-07 (with the obligatory parenthesis due to the Civil War), at which time it stopped competing due to financial problems, leaving the team then in federative ‘stand by’. He came out of that situation in 2019 to compete in the Third Regional League of the Royal Madrid Football Federation, playing his home games at the Ernesto Cotorruelo Fields.

La Ferro is the four oldest football team in Madrid, only surpassed by Real Madrid (founded in 1902), Atlético de Madrid (in 1903) and Carabanche.i (1916 year). Its founder in 1918 was a railway worker, Leocadio Martín Ruiz. Back then, the AD Ferroviaria was a club for the railwaymen’s union, so that they had the opportunity in their free time to get to know and practice sports disciplines such as gymnastics, athletics, cycling, boxing or football.

La Rosaleda was inaugurated

Last year around this time, Ferro visited La Rosaleda because it was the first team to visit as a rival to Málaga on 4-13-1941. This team also joined in the tributes in memory of the great Joaquín Peiró, a former Malaguista coach who was also part of the railway club.