Belgrano de Córdoba and the keys to his brilliant season: Farré, Vegetti’s goals and an audience that has taken over like never before

These days, there are definitely few supporters of Belgrano who remember that 1-0 victory over Godoy Cruz at the Gigante de Alberdi on April 7, 2019. That victory was not enough to avoid relegation and it was the last game that the Pirate played in the first division. In these hours the focus is not on the past, but on the near future. This Sunday, ahead Adrogue Brown in San Nicolás, the Cordoba team will be able to kick off a brilliant season and seal their return to the top flight without waiting or depending on another result.

Twenty-one wins in 33 games and an eight-point lead with nine up for grabs have put the Light blue one step away from returning to the elite after 41 months of via crucis since that descent. After two gray seasons, in the current dominoes end to end a hyper-demanding and exhausting competition, in which 37 teams from 10 provinces and the city of Buenos Aires compete for two promotions to the Professional League.

He has never been great in a tournament where it is very difficult to be, but Belgrano, who has won 16 of his 21 victories by a goal difference, putting together a very strong team and with a remarkable physical condition that allowed him to be a shredder in the second half of his games. As an example, it is worth mentioning that of the 41 goals scored in his 33 presentations, 31 were in complementary periods. That intensity made him reverse the duels in the last five minutes of play, as against Estudiantes and All Boys, or recover a point that seemed already lost, as in the draw Madryn took against Deportivo.

This journey, which began on February 14 with a 1-0 win against Atlético de Rafaela, was not without turbulence. Just a month ago, Belgrano was going through a five-game winning streak (three draws and two defeats) that had allowed the Instituto to drop to under five points. But the team was able to put up with that hole and put an end to it with a 1-0 win over the Glory in the classic that began to define the competition.

Some also felt some concern 10 days ago over the stumbling block in front of San Martín de Tucumán in the Citadel. But this Monday’s 3-0 win over Defensores de Belgrano put things right. Contrary to his custom, the Light blue eliminated with three goals in the first 25 minutes that allowed the 30,000 people who packed the Julio César Villagra stadium to enjoy a fearless evening.

Those crowds have been a constant: The 17 local games of the First National Tournament were played at full volume and with settings that included rockets, fireworks, cell phone lights, blue smoke and thousands of flags. This custom has been replicated in the three matches that Belgrano played for the Argentine Cup: 25,000 people went to La Rioja for the match against Platense, 15,000 moved to Santa Fe for the match against Estudiantes de La Plata. and 20,000 have given away to San Luis in front of Godoy Cruz.

If the fans, who will move en masse to San Nicolás this Sunday for the meeting with Brown (there will be 22,000), have built this feeling, it is because from the pitch they have received signals of a team that has been built by a club hero: William Farre. The former midfielder, who the rest of the football universe remembers mainly for the goal scored on 26 June 2011 against River at Monumental, has played 327 games in a decade in the Azzurri shirt and is the third man with the most appearances (he has only surpassed Luis Fabián Artime -336- and Juan Carlos Olave -382-).

Farré, who retired in December 2020 playing at Estudiantes de Río Cuarto and immediately joined Ricardo Zielinski’s coaching staff at Estudiantes de La Plata, responded to Belgrano’s call in May 2021, following the dissociation of the Uruguayan. Alejandro Orfila. In that tournament he got 12 wins, 5 draws and 6 defeats; that harvest wasn’t enough to fight for a promotion, as he finished sixth in his area (only the top four were still in the race). This year, with a team armed with their seal, things turned out differently.

Players with recent experience in the first division, such as Maximiliano Comba, Gabriel Compagnucci (both of Newell’s) and Manuel Vicentini (he was the captain of Sarmiento de Junín), and others who had been figures of their teams in the First National, such as Ibrahim Hesar (Estudiantes de Río Cuarto) and Alejandro Rébola (Independiente Rivadavia), arrived in early 2022 to join a group that already had longtime men, such as Diego Novaretti, Ariel Rojas, Hernán Bernardello and Fabián Bordagaray.

In that base there was a player who stood out from the others, who had already proved his worth in the last two campaigns and who this year had his definitive explosion: Captain Pablo Vegetali. Metropolitan B champion with Villa San Carlos in 2013, the Santa Fe, which had not yet finished imposing itself in the first division neither with Colón nor with Gimnasia and who had had an acceptable season in the B Nacional in Boca Unidos and a very good season in Instituto (he was top scorer in 2018/19, with 15 goals), arrived in Belgrano in June 2019.

He was the top scorer, along with Pablo Magnín (both 17 years old), in the race which had an eight-month hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic. In 2021 he repeated his he account and was only surpassed by Magnín, who scored 22 points with the Tigre jacket. This year he has 14, including 9 at the head, and leads the ranking of scorers together with Luis Silba, of Estudiantes de Río Cuarto. Five of the goals of the striker, born 33 years ago in Santo Domingo, served to define matches that the Pirate won by minimal difference.

How did the Barrio Alberdi club manage to bring together this mix of very heavy names for this category in its squad? “Money is not everything, but how it helps”, sings Los Auténticos Decadentes. Belgrano, chaired since February 2021 by another idol, Luis Fabián Artime (he is the all-time top scorer in AFA tournaments, with 94 goals), has the biggest portfolio in the division at his disposal: 32.5 million pesos per month to his professional football structure, as detailed in his 2022 budget. This allows him to comfortably outrun his 36 competitors and even double the resources of very powerful rivals such as San Martín de Tucumán.

This not only allowed him to arm himself better than anyone else for this tournament, but also to find quality solutions for your problems When Mariano Miño was injured in June (he suffered a rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee), he called Diego García, a figure of Almirante Brown, to replace him. Isidro Casanova’s club could not put up too much resistance to prevent the departure of its emblem.

Part of the income to support this budget comes from the payment of social security contributions. On July 26, the heavenly leadership announced this for the first time in its 117-year history, the institution had over 50,000 members, of which over 30% were women. The growth has been dizzying: at the beginning of 2021 it had 24,000, in December of the same year it had risen to 36,000 and in 2022 it added another 14,000. Added to this are the 28,000 tickets sold to attend the matches of the current tournament. (The Julio César Villagra has a capacity of 30,000 people).

The team, the coaching staff and the management are the pillars often cited as keys to maximizing the chances of sporting success. These days that triad seems aligned with Belgrano, so it is not strange that on Sunday he can guarantee his return to the first division with a win against Brown de Adrogué. 1297 days after his last descent.

The surprising thing is that that same day, just a couple of hours earlier, he will also be able to celebrate the jump into the top category of his women’s team. The pirates They are the leaders of the Ascent Phase of the AFA Primera B tournament with an eight-point lead over Banfield with four games to go. If Saturday Drill does not defeat Argentinos Juniors for the sake of Insect in Bajo Flores and if on Sunday the heavenly beat San Miguel to Julio César Villagra (the match will start at 10), Belgrano will shout champion. Some time later, in San Nicolás, you can do it twice.