There are many Oviedo fans who have only seen him play in the Second, Second B and Third Division. I was 19 years old, a shirt with Carlos’s number 10 signed by him; a cushion with the shield; the scarf and the team poster on the wall and a head full of goals at the Bernabéu, the Camp Nou, Mestalla, San Mamés… the day they played for the last time in the First Division. I lived in a dormitory, I was studying second year journalism, I wore size my name on its pages. The entrances to the field were made of paper and the control at the door, as in the cinema – another custom for romantics – consisted of pinching it in a corner. The Tartiere was a cozy brown brick stadium—now in its place is a calatravo pretentious squeezed between buildings—; From time to time, we found gold where another team had passed us by—a loan from Barça, from Madrid… we even signed with PSG—; or we caught wonderful footballers in the quarry who, in the football food chain, immediately took away the biggest fish from us. I mean, it was the nineties, we were young, happy and thin and, of course, we didn’t know it. It took a lifetime—an entire generation of 23-year-old Oviedo fans who only know suffering—to remember how happy we were.
These days of playoffs Those who saw Oviedo participate in the UEFA Cup in 1991 and the fans who have only seen it in the Second Division (11 years) gather in the vicinity of the new Tartiere, in joyful communion; Second B (another 8), Third (4 more) and in the UCI during two critical moments: when the then mayor of the city, Gabino de Lorenzo, of the PP, decided to invent a new team — better known among Oviedistas as “the monstrosity”—and when, in 2012, it faced a case for dissolution because it was short two million euros—and 36,962 people from 86 countries became shareholders of the club to save it—. That is to say, those who were happy and those who have never been completely happy come to the stadium together, with their different t-shirts and sponsorships – from Central Lechera Asturiana to Digi. And this happens because Oviedo never walked alone. The Liverpool motto, that exciting Anfield song, You’ll never walk alone, was also applied to Oviedin in the lowest hours, which allowed the children of those who were happy to inherit the fans, and the team, nothing less than to survive. When De Lorenzo opted for the monstrosity (he called it the ACF), Real Oviedo more than ever broke the record for members in the history of the category (10,759). In 2009, the first match of the playoffs promotion to Second B brought together 27,214 spectators at the stadium in the Asturian capital. In 2015, up to 27,035 people attended an Oviedo-Somozas.
There is little left to know if this is, finally, the year of return. Santi Cazorla deserves it, who with two European Championships and after shining at Arsenal, returned home precisely for that, for promotion, earning 91,000 euros, giving the club his image rights and adding a clause for which 10% of the sales of his shirts must go to the youth team: “Going up with Oviedo would be the most beautiful thing in my career,” he says. It is deserved by the coach, Luis Carrión – please stay – who took the team into a nervous wreck at the end of September after having scored only three points out of 18, and has led them by the hand to the door of the First division. The players deserve it, who have worked with faith and cold blood, courage and determination, and, above all, those who have never left Oviedo alone so that the day could come when the youngest understand how happy we were.
Hopefully.
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