Every April 26, the Royal Society stops to review its history with everlasting pride as a companion. These times are also days of wine and roses for the institution, in all its hemispheres: sporting solidity, economic stability, social passion in abundance. A golden age, embellished by last year’s Cup and the recurrence of qualifications for Europe. An ideal time to become a benchmark for the future, knowing that there is only one generation that has proclaimed itself, forever, an eternal source from which to draw inspiration.
La Real turns 41 today as League champion. If the current powerful project has to be looked at in a mirror, there is no other like that of the precursors of the alirón. Those who were in charge of championing the conversion of candidates into winners. Those who made it possible for glory to be achieved in a club of this dimension. Geographically small, discreet in view of many other corners, but the largest for people who feel it as a piece of their lives.
The story of the explosion of agonizing joy, the story of Zamora’s shot at goal, the story of a Molinón txuri urdin, the story of the penalty against López Ufarte that Kortabarria directed at the squad, the story of Mesa’s disturbing comeback for the Sporting, everyone knows it. La Real is going through a phase in which, being incomparable, it works without giving up repeating what it achieved on a rainy afternoon in 1981. Football, at the state level, once again leaves a space in the Olympus that Real Madrid and Barcelona galvanize. The goal on the main floor of Anoeta is for the Real to resist with a vigilant eye, attentive in the line of aspiring feats. The institution has earned the right for the people to believe that it is possible, based as it is on the aristocracy of the League, with a record budget and an expectation never seen among the people.
Emmanuel was 9 years old.
La Real is five days away from entering Europe for the third consecutive time. The only txuri urdin cast to have signed such a streak is the same one that was proclaimed champion 41 years ago. A squad that between 1979 and 1983 linked four passports to Europe uninterruptedly.
The referential aura that hangs over the Real champion transcends the meaning of the Gijón League. An era as magnificent as the one they starred in with four consecutive qualifications for Europe is another masterpiece that Real de Aperribay has in mind to reissue. The president is promiscuous in putting the eighties version of the club on the table as a role model. Just counting the starts in Europe, he has come halfway. He has two in a row.
Of course, there is no member of the squad who 41 years ago saw Real win the League against Sporting. They were different times. Times of youth for the owners of their days. Imanol Alguacil (July 4, 1971) was three months away from his 10th birthday, so he celebrated Zamora’s goal in the flesh of his earliest childhood. He may be the second coach in history to put Real in Europe three times, one after another. Will he win any League? 41 years ago an eternal source of inspiration was founded.
