Jokin
Aperribay took his first steps as the highest president of the Real when it was just 12 years, on April 26, 2009, presided over the first Huesca-Real Sociedad in history disputed in El Alcoraz in Second Division. With that victory that was achieved with a goal from Sebastian
Abreu from midfield (1-2) after Aranburu opened the scoring, the team that at that time led Juanma
Lillo, on my way to the European Cup final today as an assistant to Pep
Guardiola, kept alive for a few more weeks the dream of promotion that, finally, that season did not occur. If the Real win on Saturday at El Alcoraz, which has little or nothing to do with that of a dozen years ago, they will have taken a giant step to qualify for Europe for the fifth time since Aperribay presides over the club. Alone Jose Luis Orbegozo achieved more continental passports as president, six among 1967 and 1983.
The x-ray of the passage of time not only accurately reflects the physical evolution of people, typical of the passage of more than a decade. There are hardly any players left, not already in the Real, but active from that match in which Aperribay he was still sitting in a position he had accessed in December 2008, four months earlier. That was only the seventeenth of the more than 500
matches that the Real has disputed with its current president in office. Bravo, who was playing his third season as txuri urdin and is now in the Betis, Mikel
Gonzalez, in the AEk Larnaca at 35 years old, Marquitos, in the Ibiza of Segunda B, or the ‘Crazy’ Abreu, who is reluctant to leave football at 44, are the few active survivors of a starting lineup in which Labaka Y Ansotegi, for example, they are part of the current coaching staff of the Real.
The long journey that he has made Jokin
Aperribay from El Alcoraz to this day, not only has it allowed him to see how that Huesca stadium, which in 2009 was the most similar to a Third Division stadium, is now a charming field for more than 7,638 thanks to the renovations started with that first promotion to Second and the two after First. The president of the Royal has possibly promoted the largest reconversion in the history of the club, taking it from Second to Champions and to be cup champion, to remodel Anoeta and turn it into a magnificent stadium without running tracks and to be able bring the team to Europe for the fifth time in eight years, the last two consecutively. Only Orbegozo achieved one more continental presence in a mandate that lasted 16 years. Aperribay, who will turn 13 in office in December and is already the second-longest-serving president in the club's history, has three more years to surpass the first champion president. He only needs to win the League.