Fernando Vázquez, Deportivo La Coruña’s trainer, was in front of the TV station’s camera on Monday evening Movistar and looked back. “What weren’t we all congratulating ourselves …” Vázquez sighed, referring to how extensively many dignitaries patted each other on the shoulder and said: “Football has everything under control.” Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that! “Now it has escaped,” Vázquez complained. And that in turn caused a chaotic season finale, which was full of reproaches, anger and a bad end for La Coruña: The champion of the 1999/2000 season fell more or less without a fight – and as the first former champions club since Betis Sevilla in 1947 – into third class from.
Of course, Deportivo had done a lot during the season to at least face the relegation. There was something cruel about the fact that tension and suffering ended up discharging in such a strange, sterile way. What led to it on Monday? Well, this: A few minutes before the start of the 42nd and final match day, Spain’s league association LFP and the football federation RFEF had canceled the game between Deportivo and the Madrid suburb club CF Fuenlabrada. Eight professional Fuenlabradas tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday and, like five other members of the staff, were quarantined.
The outrage of the authorities in the northwestern Spanish city followed: Fuenlabrada had had several Corona cases in its ranks over the weekend, and La Coruña’s mayor wanted to know on Tuesday how negligent it could be to travel half the Iberian peninsula with a virus in your luggage. But in a way that was just a side note. The focus was on the sporty “earthquake”, the intensity of which was initially only to be guessed at on Tuesday. And that can serve, at least in part, as a lesson in all Spanish singularities about the consequences of the pandemic on professional football.
Deportivo now wants to go to court
It turned out that Deportivo against Fuenlabrada was the only match of the match day that touched both questions of promotion and relegation. But because those in charge of the league, probably out of consideration for player contracts, transfer activities and television rights, did not want to prolong the season, they did not postpone the whole match day. But just Deportivo against Fuenlabrada. “A total and absolute distortion of competition,” said Deportivo President Fernando Vidal – for understandable reasons. His team could no longer manage the rescue on their own. But she was deprived of the chance to psychologically put pressure on her competitors from afar. “Everyone knows what an important role the results of parallel games on such a match day play,” said Vázquez.
In the end, this was a fact: CD Lugo turned a backlog at CD Mirandés and secured second-class results with a 2-1 victory; Albacete did the same feat with a 1-0 triumph at FC Cadiz, which was already a promoted player. Deportivo La Coruña, on the other hand, descended into the third division together with CD Numancia. The smack of Monday became even worse in the end.
Because: The CF Fuenlabrada, who dreams of moving up to the first division and playing against superstars like Lionel Messi, was spared the stress of the last few minutes of the season. Since Monday evening, Fuenlabrada has known that in the catch-up game at Deportivo, one point would be enough to move from the currently ridiculous eighth place in the table to sixth place – and thus displace FC Elche from the promotion playoffs. This in turn leads to piquant footnotes.
Because Fuenlabrada was initially isolated as a team, it is obvious from a health policy perspective. But: According to the hygiene protocol, “only” the players who had also tested positive should have been isolated, so Fuenlabrada could, if not, have competed with the rest of the team and youth players. The club lawyer of CF Fuenlabrada is of all people Javier Tebas – the son of the same name of the president of the league association LFP. Elche was not so lucky. Elche met Fuenlabrada on Friday and had contact with potentially infectious opponents.
But that wasn’t enough. At the former first division club Rayo Vallecano, who still had theoretical chances for promotion, a player said that he had had previous contact with a Fuenlabrada professional, they had been eating together. The striker was immediately retired, so Rayo asked to reschedule his game at Racing Santander, but was said to be “forced to compete under point-of-departure threats”. Now Rayo, together with Elche and Numancia, is among the clubs that want to appeal. Deportivo also wants to go to court – and will contest the last matchday “before the highest authorities” in the country, said the president.
The only way to avert it is that Deportivo descends into the inferno of the third division for the first time in almost 40 years – a low point after three first division relegations in the past decade (2011, 2013 and 2018). That alone marked the creeping decline of a club that almost celebrated the first championship title in its history in 1994 – but Miroslav Djukic missed a penalty in the last minute of the last game day, the trophy went to FC Barcelona from Johan Cruyff. Deportivo won in 2000, two years later the club won the Spanish Cup – at Real Madrid, on the centenary of the founding of the Spanish champions. Deportivo later succeeded in the Champions League with wonderful players like Mauro Silva, Fran, Valerón, Bebeto, Donato or Roy Makaay, who annoyed FC Bayern in the Champions League in 2002 so much that Munich Makaay went to the Isar for a lot of money fetched. There was once. Now hopes in La Coruña are not based on kickers. But only for lawyers.
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