Two surprising promotions

Choco and Val Miñor will be in the junior league of honor next season together with Celta and Corux. The redondelanos return two years later, and the nigranese only one. The respective technicians — who were new to their positions — assure that promotion was not the goal, but that the growth of their groups, filled with children in first and second grade, led them to strive for a return and that they eventually achieved it.

The second time Choco played in the first division was in atypical circumstances, recalls his coach Hugo Álvarez. “It was the year of the pandemic and it was different both because of the way up and because of the league itself,” he recalls. So now it’s a different story. “It is an immense joy. In addition, with a group consisting mainly of freshmen and sophomores”, he emphasizes. He trained some of them as cadets and with them he was also promoted to the Honor Department.

The fact that they have known each other for a long time is something they have earned, he admits. But the main key to success, he claimed, was “that they are a group that loves training and loves football, they are serious and responsible when it comes to work.” Furthermore, 80% are products from our own quarry and all have adapted very well to the category, he says.

Álvarez assures that they did not leave with the goal of promotion. “The idea was that we can fight against something until the end, that the last matches are not a mere formality and that they bring opportunities”, he signs. But it was a long time from there to the climb up this trail. “Because I’m so young, there are doubts. It’s a league with a lot of seniors and we’ve had first-years in positions like goalkeepers and regular centre-backs,” he elaborates.

On the last day, they came depending on themselves for promotion and did not hesitate: 11-0 at Alondras. “They are a hard-working team with good players, but in the end you could see the difference between what we played for each other, we scored early and it started on the right path,” he says.

In a year that saw his first team return to the Preferred, this promotion is small compensation. “It was a difficult year, with a change in management, and we tried to abstract ourselves. Satisfied with the fact that there will be four teams from around Vigo in the first league, he does not reveal his future: “I’m happy, but I don’t know anything.”

“When you climb a year after descending, the joy is double”

After a long period in the Division of Honor, Val Miñor started a new chapter in the National League a year ago with a new coach, Marco Rodríguez Teijeira. Álex Villar, who he says has been a big supporter all season, stepped down and took over. He admits that it made him dizzy. “It is the first team of the school and to replace Álex, a born worker and someone very important for Val Miñor, was a big challenge,” he says.

A year later, he passed it with flying colors, managing to return the category. “The joy is twofold, because it is always difficult to promote the next year,” he says. Besides, the team was practically new, with a lot of first- and second-year youngsters who needed to get used to each other, which was all the more reason to give it “double value,” he insists.

It makes it clear that such a quick return to the first league was not even in the most optimistic forecasts. “A new team was created that thinks in the medium term, in two or three years. The idea was more of a project for the future,” he says. But the truth is that the approach changed as the weeks went by. “Seeing how the competition was going, we started to get closer to the high zone, the team continued to improve and we entered the circle of confidence,” he says. Seeing each other up there, they began to believe, he adds.

After losing to Deportivo, they won seven in a row and reached the last game without promotion, but they had it in their hands. “It was a bit complicated to manage. Many things are mixed: emotions, tension, the weight of the match and everything opposite… It was a match of maximum rivalry with Valladares,” he says. And they had to come back: “It was important to give them confidence, talk to them a lot and try them argue.”

The fact that 75 or 80% is from home is an incentive for the club’s project, and for its coach it is one of the keys to success. Also “collective strength, because they made a phenomenal group” that “surprised” him in their daily work.

He believes that the presence of four teams from the vicinity of Vigo is something that must be evaluated very positively, and he points out that “many matches of maximum rivalry await them”.