The Renaissance Continues for Real Zaragoza as They Defeat Sevilla Under the Spanish Dusk

La Romareda in the resplen­dent crepús­culo (twilight).

The Jan­u­ary trans­fer win­dow is made for the top teams to rein­force their squads for a title run.  As a whole, the win­dow flew by with lit­tle fan­fare.  Real Zaragoza was one of the few teams in Europe to make sweep­ing changes to their ros­ter.  While their moves would hardly gather any front or back page head­lines, the Zaragoza board real­ized that they needed to effect change in order to avoid relegation.

Even before Jan­u­ary, they let go of man­ager Marcelino Gar­cía Toral, the same man that guided the Aragonese club to pro­mo­tion last sea­son.  While the move was not pop­u­lar with some of the play­ers and the fans, the Zaragoza brass believed in the reserve team coach, José Aure­lio Gay, to run the senior team for the rest of the season.

A capa­ble mid­fielder for Espanyol and Real Zaragoza in the late 1980s through the 1990s, Gay’s sub­se­quent man­age­r­ial career gar­nered mediocre results with mul­ti­ple teams in the lower divi­sions of Spain.  With his lat­est stop with the Real Zaragoza B team, he led the group of acad­emy play­ers to the top of Group XVII, the Aragon region of Spain, with a pos­i­tive, attack­ing style that rarely occurs in the rough and tum­ble of the Ter­cera División, the fourth level in the Span­ish foot­ball pyramid.

If Xavi Hernán­dez com­plains of the man-marking and the lack of space he some­times receives in La Liga and in the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League, he would dread play­ing in the Ter­cera División because a vast major­ity of the play­ers at that level do not have the tech­ni­cal skill to com­pete for ros­ter spots at the top level but have the heart and desire to chase the ball and com­mit fully to chal­lenges.  Some of them are part-time play­ers, and oth­ers are young can­tera kids who are try­ing to impress their supe­ri­ors, so a tire­less work ethic is nec­es­sary to sur­vive in this division.

A coach­ing change, how­ever, appeared to be only win­dow dress­ing as the poor results con­tin­ued into Jan­u­ary.  Pres­i­dent Agapito Igle­sias gave his con­sent to sev­eral sign­ings as well as releas­ing a cou­ple of their impor­tant play­ers.  With the worst defense in La Liga, defend­ers were at the top of the list of improve­ments needed.  Jirí Jarošík, for­mer CSKA Moskva and Chelsea defender, arrived on a free trans­fer, and they loaned vet­eran Ital­ian defender Mat­teo Con­tini from Napoli until the end of the sea­son, with an option to buy him out­right.  They even brought for­mer FC Barcelona and Vil­lar­real defender Edmil­son back from the dead.

Besides the holes in the back line, Zaragoza needed fin­ish­ers.  Abel Aguilar was Los Blan­quil­los’ top scorer with only four goals, so rein­force­ments in attack became impor­tant to keep up with the oppo­si­tion if the defense could not hold.  Lazio loaned speedy winger Eliseu Pereira, who played with Málaga for two sea­sons, and Recre­ativo Huelva stand­out Adrián Col­unga was loaned to Zaragoza.  These two pale in com­par­i­son to Zaragoza’s third for­ward sign­ing, Chilean striker Hum­berto “Chu­pete” Suazo.  A pro­lific goal-scorer with Chilean club pow­er­house Colo-Colo and 2009 Mex­i­can Aper­tura cham­pi­ons Mon­ter­rey, Mon­ter­rey loaned him to Zaragoza until the end of the sea­son, with Zaragoza hav­ing the option to make the loan per­ma­nent for €10 million.

The one sig­nif­i­cant player to leave Real Zaragoza in Jan­u­ary was 36-year-old cap­tain Roberto Ayala.  Signed by Zaragoza from Vil­lar­real before Ayala had played a sin­gle match for Vil­lar­real, the Argen­tinean defender’s career path slowly turned down­ward from that point for­ward.  While the for­mer Valen­cia leg­end played admirably and ade­quately for the Aragonese club, the heights to which he played for Valen­cia and the Argen­tinean national team never mate­ri­al­ized at Zaragoza.  Ayala and Zaragoza came to terms with the mutual ter­mi­na­tion of his con­tract, and he returned home to Argentina, where he cur­rently plays for Rac­ing Club de Avellaneda.

With all of these alter­ations within the team, they needed time to work out the chem­istry among them­selves.  Unfor­tu­nately, with only half of the sea­son remain­ing and rel­e­ga­tion a loom­ing pos­si­bil­ity, they needed to gen­er­ate pos­i­tive results quickly to avoid falling to the Segunda División for the sec­ond time in three seasons.

Although they lost 4–2 to Vil­lar­real two weeks ago, they fought back from a 3–0 deficit to make the last ten min­utes of the match nail bit­ing.  Goals from Eliseu and Ángel Lafita made a stroll for Vil­lar­real turn into a stren­u­ous run.

Through seventy-six min­utes at Tener­ife last Sun­day, Tener­ife out­classed Zaragoza, but poor fin­ish­ing yielded only one goal for Los Chichar­reros.  In the span of six min­utes, an unnec­es­sary penalty con­ceded by Tener­ife cen­tral defender Eze­quiel Luna that was con­verted by Hum­berto Suazo, a beau­ti­fully lofted shot by Adrián Col­unga over Tener­ife goal­keeper Ser­gio Aragone­ses, and an Ángel Lafita blast from over thirty yards that was the “Golazo de la Sem­ana” led to José Aure­lio Gay’s first win as man­ager of the senior team and Zaragoza’s first win away from La Romareda.

Return­ing from the warm tem­per­a­tures of Santa Cruz de Tener­ife in the Canary Islands to the cold Cierza winds in Zaragoza, they hosted Sevilla FC on Sun­day, who was fight­ing their way back into the Cham­pi­ons League spots with two straight wins in La Liga over Almería and Valen­cia and a mid­week win in the first leg of the Copa del Rey semi­fi­nal over Getafe.  Ángel Lafita was sus­pended for this game due to an accu­mu­la­tion of five yel­low cards, and Adrián Col­unga filled in to pair with Chu­pete Suazo in attack.  Five of the Jan­u­ary sign­ings started in this match for Real Zaragoza, and the team per­formed as though they had been there since sum­mer training.

Sevilla fielded a rel­a­tively weak­ened side, as man­ager Manolo Jiménez decided to rest the likes of Luís Fabi­ano, Renato, Jesús Navas, Didier Zokora, and Diego Per­otti because they played mid­week in the Copa del Rey semi­fi­nal and will likely play them in the sec­ond leg this Wednesday.

For the first half-hour, the teams were fairly even, as both teams had decent chances on goal but failed to cap­i­tal­ize on them.  Then from a cor­ner kick in the 31st minute, Sevilla failed to clear the ball, and the ensu­ing scram­ble in the penalty box led to the ball pop­ping out for Mat­teo Con­tini, who shot it across goal to the right far post, and passed Sevilla goal­keeper Andrés Palop for the open­ing score.

An egre­gious goal­keep­ing error by Juan Pablo Car­rizo gave the Andalu­cians the equal­iz­ing goal less than three min­utes after they fell behind.  From the left flank, Diego Capel floated a cross just beyond the right post.  Car­rizo made the deci­sion to ven­ture off his line to punch the cross away.  He flailed and failed mis­er­ably to make con­tact with the ball, and Juan Cala’s header hit the cross­bar.  Frédéric Kanouté slot­ted the rebound from five yards out, and Car­rizo appealed and remon­strated to ref­eree César Muñiz Fer­nán­dez that he was obstructed.  Clearly, there was no foul, but Car­rizo needed some­one to blame for his mis­take, and for his efforts, Muñiz Fer­nán­dez rewarded him with a yel­low card for dissent.

Equal­ity would not last long, as Álvaro Negredo headed the ball into his own net from an Eliseu whipped cross in the 41st minute.  Zaragoza held a 2–1 lead into half­time, and they deserved the lead in spite of the go-ahead goal being an own goal.  The club from Aragon cre­ated more qual­ity chances than Sevilla, and their com­mit­ment and spirit shone through the whole squad.  Even Chu­pete Suazo har­ried and hur­ried the Sevilla defend­ers and mid­field­ers as they crossed the halfway line.  Suazo acknowl­edged that he has had atti­tude prob­lems in the past, when he played for Uni­ver­si­dad Católica in Chile and in Mon­ter­rey.  If José Aure­lio Gay can get Suazo to work out­side of his striker role, he must be doing some­thing right.

Pre­dictably, the sec­ond half tran­spired with Sevilla impos­ing their game onto Real Zaragoza, as Jiménez sent in Per­otti, Renato, and Navas in to over­turn the one goal deficit.  Sevilla could not break down the Zaragoza defense (who knew?), and frus­tra­tions became tan­gi­ble when both Álvaro Negredo and Mar­ius Stanke­vi­cius received straight red cards late in the match for vicious tack­les on Mat­teo Con­tini and Ander Her­rera respec­tively.  Sevilla never mounted a seri­ous chal­lenge to Car­rizo in the sec­ond half, and Real Zaragoza ele­vated out of the rel­e­ga­tion places with a 2–1 vic­tory, two points clear of 18th place Real Valladolid.

Last sea­son, Mal­lorca and Espanyol were in the last two places in the table at this point of the cam­paign.  Like phoenix, they rose from the dead and fin­ished ninth and tenth respec­tively at the end of the year.  Real Zaragoza is a strong can­di­date to ful­fill that role this sea­son because of the renewed sense of hope instilled by José Aure­lio Gay and brought by the new play­ers that arrived in January.

The next five matches look promis­ing for Real Zaragoza as they only face one oppo­nent in the top half of La Liga, the ever-inconsistent Getafe.  If they are to remain in La Liga for next year, this stretch of matches is cru­cial for their survival.

Zaragoza Pres­i­dent Agapito Igle­sias wrote an open let­ter on the club’s web­site at the begin­ning of the New Year to apol­o­gize to the fans.  In part of his post, he said:

“The first thing I want to do, hav­ing taken on the role (of pres­i­dent) is ask sin­cere for­give­ness for all our mis­takes.  We have 23 league games left, a lot of months of foot­ball which we are fac­ing with a slight dis­ad­van­tage but in which every­thing is still possible.”

His vision and fore­sight are becom­ing to blend with real­ity, and with con­tin­ued good play, they con­trol their own des­tiny instead of rely­ing on oth­ers to fail.

Tagged as: Adrian Colunga, Alvaro Negredo, Angel Lafita, Copa del Rey, Edmilson, Eliseu, Frederic Kanoute, Humberto Suazo, January transfer window, Jesus Navas, Jiri Jarosik, Jose Aurelio Gay, Juan Pablo Carrizo, La Liga, Matteo Contini, real zaragoza, Roberto Ayala, sevilla, Sevilla FC, tenerife, Transfers, villarreal