The first efforts arrived on July 7, that’s where Oviedo began to sweat in its preseason premiere in El Requexón. In everyone’s head, an idea that few dared to pronounce publicly: the promotion play-off. That has been the goal for the last 10 months. Now, Oviedo is playing to reach the desired goal in just 90 minutes, with the addition that it will depend on what will happen in other scenarios. Almost a year of work at stake. A dream in breath. Football always reserves finals that not even the most twisted of scriptwriters would have planned.
The season has left more smiles than tears, but it has also included slips and doubts. The campaign has served to forge homegrown talent in the competitive Second Division, but it admits the question of what would have happened if the team had straightened out sooner. The match against Ibiza (20 hours, Movistar), in combination with Burgos-Girona and Sporting-Las Palmas, will tell if the season ends with the thumbs up or thumbs down in terms of the play-off issue, but the calm analysis would have to be done regardless of the ultimate outcome.
But that will come when the season draws the curtain. At the moment, Oviedo is reluctant to do so. He wants more. That the Tartiere does not close at around 10:00 p.m., that the stadium prepare for what comes next, a huge party, an invitation to return to the First Division, where the blue team has not traveled since 2001.
One can approach the game from a more optimistic perspective or stay with the glass half empty, but it is indisputable that the team has never been so close to the First Division in the last 20 years. It is a golden opportunity.
This is how the fans have seemed to understand it, which has responded in an exemplary way to the club’s appeal: that the Tartiere dress up. It may be the last act of a campaign that again excited Oviedismo or be the shortcut to the play-offs, but the fans seem to have hooked the team in a fast-paced final stretch, despite the last streak, 2 points out of 9, that prevents the blues from depending on themselves now.
So the Tartiere will reach 20,000 spectators after the success of the partner escort campaign and it is expected that the radio stations and mobile applications will report at the moment what is happening in other places. Oviedismo divides its spirits between Tartiere and El Plantío (the vast majority consider it impossible for Sporting to throw a cable against Las Palmas).
The psychological element will also play, of course. Go out plugged in, put in quickly, pass the pressure on to the rivals… Details that in other days do not count. In the last dates of the competition, emotions weigh more than the board. Oviedo believes and Tartiere pushes him to try. All with the same goal: that today is not the last date.
