Cádiz rises to the land of dreams after astonishing Real Madrid in a historic victory | Football

TThe plane was miles above Spain heading south, it was dark outside, and they were still a bit far from home when an urgent announcement came from the flight deck. “I’m from Cádiz,” the copilot informed them over the loudspeaker, “and I just wanted to congratulate you because today you have done something historic that will be remembered forever.” It was late and the passengers, the first team from Cádiz to play in first for 15 years – they were exhausted but they started clapping. From the back of the hut, some chanted his name. Rufiano! Rufiano! they sang, the noise level rose again briefly, the songs started once more.

Rufiano was right. The Cádiz coach, Álvaro Cervera, was wrong: he was wrong before the game and also in the middle, but at the end he was radiant, wrapped in a hug so strong that he could barely breathe, celebrating as if they had won something, which he absolutely had. On the eve of his team’s visit to Real Madrid, he had said: “You can forget about being better than them.” At halftime, with his team one goal up, he feared the lead would soon be gone, admitting afterwards that all he could think about was: “We will lose this.” Now he was bouncing around, delighted that neither of them was true.

It wasn’t just that the newly promoted Cádiz beat Real Madrid 1-0 on Saturday, with a goal from Choco Lozano; it was what they deserved. It was that the Cádiz midfielder, Alex Fernández, insisted that “if we had scored more in the first half, it would not have been a surprise” and Zinedine Zidane and his players agreed. “If they had two or three more, we couldn’t have said nothing,” said the Real Madrid coach. Thibaut Courtois admitted that “they were better than us in every way and beat us in everything.”

Cádiz took the lead when Álvaro Negredo muffled a clever header on Lozano’s path to score, and he had been getting there. The game was barely in minute 16 but that was already from Cádiz sixth Clear opportunity – Ramos had cleared the line, Courtois had saved two and Negredo had headed out twice – and didn’t finish there either. “We had had chances to have scored one or two more goals,” Lozano said and had two of them while Juan Cala headed another just off the mark.

Madrid seemed as surprised as everyone else. It wasn’t supposed to be like that, or maybe that’s what Cádiz wanted everyone to think. Cervera does not hesitate to be a defensive coach. When he said that his players could forget that they are better than Madrid, he was not giving up the right to beat Madrid – “we are not going to change shirts” – but suggesting that they would do it on defense, which is what they do most. stuff. “We have the data that shows that they are uncomfortable with teams that relax,” he said, “and we are not very attracted to the idea of ​​pushing high, being brave and letting five in.”

“Our game is ABC but ABC is good”, Fernández had said, “we are on the defensive because we like it.” And when Diego Torres, from El País, had suggested that Madrid don’t like to attack with everything either, midfielder José Mari replied: “Don’t attack us then, and we will not attack you. Organized. Why argue?

Instead, Cádiz lashed out at Madrid. And while Zidane made personnel decisions that don’t always work out well – Marcelo on the left back, Toni Kroos in deep midfield, Casemiro not on the team, Isco on him – and Casemiro complained that they had “given away” the first half, lamenting “Our attitude cannot be this”, the Cádiz were superb. A “recital”, AS called it, his Madrid resident Tomás Roncero moaning: “They seemed 8-2 for Bayern.”

Except that at half-time they had only scored one and that, Cervera feared, would cost them. “The normal thing is that when you let them go they make you pay,” he admitted. “They don’t let you get away with it: they end up hitting you. It is not normal for what happened today to happen ”. What happened was … well, not much. Zidane made four changes at halftime. Karim Benzema crashes into the crossbar. Madrid had a lot of ball. And that was it. Cádiz defended, falling deep, but rarely allowed opportunities. “We saw them attack and we held on, which is what we like to do,” said Pacha Espino.

At full time, Cádiz had only 26% possession, but had more shots than Madrid and had accumulated 12 corners. “We won because we defended well, not because we attacked well: if we had attacked well, we would have scored five,” Cervera said. “I’m very happy because you don’t beat Real Madrid every day.”

It is not any day. Madrid had won all seven games in Valdebebas, with an aggregate score of 14-2. They hadn’t even gone there. And Cádiz had never beaten Real Madrid. They had only drawn one and had not even beaten Castilla, Madrid’s B team, when they arrived here. In fact, they had awarded five. No wonder they went crazy with the whistle, later Cervera apologized because in the midst of the madness he had forgotten to go shake hands with the other bank. Instead, they jumped up and yelled, “How good are we ?!”

Pretty cool. When they boarded the plane home, they released their unofficial anthem: a comedy. two-step taken from the city carnival in 1998 and called They told me that yellow. “They tell me that yellow is a curse for artists”, he begins, hammering the palms of the players against the upper box office, “but for the Cádiz fans it is heavenly glory and that is why they paint their faces yellow and their hearts it turns yellow, although all getting in return is a catalog of disappointment. “

Not always, not anymore. The team that was in the third division five years ago, which had been close to bankruptcy, a team still under construction whose own president said it had performed poorly in the transfer market, with a budget just one-eighth of that of the Madrid, joined table top as they took off. Decisions against him against Granada and Seville could have been greater. He has won in Madrid and San Mamés. “Giant killers,” AS called them. “Cádiz never tires of making history,” insisted Diario de Cádiz. “Historic and well deserved”, the Voz de Cádiz forward cheered, asking from within: “Where is the roof of this team? How far can they go? Because we have already reached Viking territory. “

“We were better than them: this is what we dream of,” defender Carlos Akapo said. “It is not easy to do what we have done. This is unimaginable for us. If you had said that this would happen, we would have said ‘impossible’ but that is football, “added Lozano. “I don’t know if it was historic, but I will remember it forever,” Cervera said.

It was Cervera’s 199th match in command, after taking over Cádiz in Second B. He immediately won promotion, then finished fifth, ninth and seventh in the second division. When they finally went up in the summer, he felt liberated, collapsed and crying, a great outpouring of relief. It has not always been easy, he had thought that 2019-20 would be his last season and he says he feels countercultural in Cádiz. And yet, a defensive coach who breaks with the bohemian and fun ideals and the idiosyncrasies of the club and the city, who insists that “he will not be remembered as Mágico González or Pepe Mejías”, his achievements are enormous and could not be more . popular.

One day early in his passage through the club, after a player escaped, Cervera insisted: “The fight is not negotiated“The fight is not negotiable. A friend made shirts with that written on the front and before he knew it, it had become a call cadists, a lesson to live and not just for football. It was a badge of identity and it was everywhere, including the house of a Cádiz fan named Carmelo Albaiceta, who had changed the name of his house. The fight is not negotiated. On the way to see his assistant coach, Cervera noticed him on the front wall as he passed. Shaken, he came home, told his children and promised that if Cádiz won the promotion, they would call and see who lives there.

This summer they did. “When I heard the bell, I thought it was the milkman,” Albaiceta said. Instead, standing in the doorway was the man who had led his soccer team to first and he still had history to do.