The azulonas can become the first team in the region tomorrow to advance to the First Division of women’s football
On the deserted highway, the green fields of Cuevas de Reyllo, Cánovas, Los Almagros and Balsapintada already announce that the landscape this rainy spring is like little else. This mostly arid and dry land was never like this. It’s Thursday morning. Blue sky. Bright. What wind. On reaching the Guadalentín complex, at the foot of a Sierra Espuña that is less brown than usual, there is silence. This has always been the case. The peace is broken only by the screams of Randri García, the coach who ten years ago came up with the idea that it would be a good idea for the city of Alhama, of 22,000 inhabitants, to have a women’s football team. The male, who never got past Third, had been in Preferred Territorial for a while.
“Fast! Play! Opens! Faster! Change, we’re going to low block! It’s the orders of Randri, a whirlwind, during the penultimate practice of the most important week in the club’s history. Randri is pure passion. He is the boss in an Alhama he founded with his father Antonio García Águila.They started in the First Autonomous Region, “the lowest category of regional football”, he recalls. Now, ten years later, they are just over 24 hours removed from touching the sky and become the first Murcian club to reach the First Division, which has been renamed Liga Iberdrola for reasons of commercial exploitation, awaiting the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético, Athletic, Valencia, Real Sociedad, Betis and Seville.
“I could never have imagined such a scenario and to tell you otherwise is lying. We wanted to make a great project for women’s football in Alhama, but we never dreamed that there would be a promotion to the First Division. We are also experiencing a time of change and improvement in women’s football in Spain. This is a gift, when we finally get it,” explains Randri, ‘alma mater’ of the project, together with Tamara García, coordinator and former captain of the azulón group.
Year of snow, year of goods. The Majal del Puerco, the highest peak in Sierra Espuña, has been painted white several times in this wet 2022 like few others. Never seen? That’s right, but even more amazing is Alhama CF ElPozo’s. “We have a lot of constraints and our budget is very tight. I’ve played with the same 12 players all year and we’ve been battling big rivals like Cacereño and Granada, who have a First Division squad for me. But the reality is that we are very close to making history,” sums up the Alhameño coach.
Randri collects the fruits of a decade of dedication, suffering and work. The ascent is practically done. Although he does not want to claim a victory yet, as Alhama needs one more point. The tie is enough to sing the alirón tomorrow in Pozoblanco (Córdoba). Just before his match, however, Cacereño plays in Albacete. If the Extremadurans don’t win in La Mancha, the Azulonas will jump to play their match against Pozoalbense, at 6 p.m., mathematically promoted. “We don’t want to know the result of Cacereño. We go out and win our game and confirm our promotion with a win over Pozoalbense,” said Cartagena striker Violeta Quiles, who has had an excellent campaign.
Marina Martí, from La Mancha, who has been with the club for four seasons, also wants us to “focus on our game and not think about what is happening in Albacete”. The highly experienced Argentine Mariela Coronel, 41, points out that “we have to have fun on the field and finish well, show our faces in the last two games, even if we promote to First Division this Saturday.” The captain is the Murcian centre-back Judith Caravaca, for whom “the only secret” to Alhama’s success is that “we have had a good group and a good atmosphere and we have not stopped working and sacrificing ourselves in every training session and in every game” .
Galician attacker Andrea Carid underlines the “important value” of the Alhameña fans. The average attendance at the Guadalentín complex is 800 spectators, so the only grandstand in the small field is always packed and people cheering. For example, Alhama CF ElPozo has not lost a league game at home since November 2020. “They told me about it, but you have to be here and experience it firsthand. Our public press and we feel very supported when we play at home,” said Carid.
The goalkeeper is Laura Martínez from Alicante, who arrived three years ago without debuting in the Reto Iberdrola competition and “has matured personally and sportingly”. She believes that “we should go out and play against Pozoalbense without thinking about what is at stake and with the same idea that gave us such good results this year.” Laura Sánchez, Paulita and Sara Rubio are not starters and the three underline the importance that the substitutes have had “so that the training sessions of the week have quality” and the group “is strengthened at the level of the dressing room”, says Sara Rubio of Talavera .
Mariela Coronel, one of the best Argentine players of the past decade, is speeding up her career in Alhama, after two World Cups and the Olympic Games. She has triumphed in Zaragoza, Atlético and Villarreal and gives advice to her teammates. “I came here because Alhama always seemed like a place where people work with passion and a barbaric illusion. And that’s the key to being active for a long time [ella tiene 41 años] It doesn’t matter that they pay you a salary now and not before. The desire you put into it is more important,” he says. She knows happy days are coming in Alhama.
Randri García doesn’t want to talk about promotion until he’s completely exhausted, but logically the club has been working on his sights on playing next season in the elite of Spanish football. In principle, the José Kubala pitch at the Guadalentín complex does not meet the minimum requirements to host Iberdrola League matches, but at Alhama CF ElPozo “we are not considering going to Murcia or Lorca to play,” warns Randri.
The technician of the azulón team explains it clearly. “The key to all of this is a sense of belonging. All we achieve will be the Alhama, with good and evil. It is a pride that a city of 22,000 inhabitants Barcelona, Real Madrid, Valencia, Athletic… And that is why we continue here, even if the field has to be renovated,” says Randri.
The Federation gives a year to those who have recently been promoted to replace the artificial grass with natural grass. And the stands need to be widened. The CSD is financing the new professional league for women with an investment of 31 million euros over the next three years. The minimum budget required for the Alhama will be 1.5 million.
The players and technical staff of Alhama CF ElPozo do not want to know anything about festivities or official receptions until the promotion is a fact. But the truth is that someone is hiding cava in the fan bus going to the game tomorrow. And that the arrival is scheduled for two o’clock in the morning. It will be at the Alhama Fairgrounds, where the popular Los Mayos festivities end this weekend.
If all goes well, the party is guaranteed. A “secret” song has been prepared to be played by Marina Martí, an attacker from Azulona who is responsible for setting up the music in the dressing room. “It’s always reggaeton. They all like it and so far no one has complained,” he jokes.
Today the azulona expedition leaves, with Laura, Mutri, Lena, Judith, Coronel, Andrea Carid, Salazar, Paulita, Violeta Quiles, Africa González, Helena Torres, Nerea Vicente, Ángela, Paula González, Sara Rubio, Marina Martí and Laura Sánchez , away from the Cordovan town of Pozoblanco. There awaits Pozoalbense, classified twelfth and who needs a victory to escape relegation to the Third Division. The Alhama is quoted with history. They all want it to be an unforgettable Saturday.
Andrea Carid, Helena Torres, Mariela Coronel and Marina Martí are the players of the Alhama CF ElPozo squad who have experience in the First Division. They all agree that a lot has changed (for the better) in recent years. “When I played in the First Division five years ago, everything was very different. The players were not registered and there were hardly any salaries. It was all very amateurish. Little by little steps have been taken towards the professionalization of women’s football,” says Martí.
Andrea Carid, who has returned to football after a successful stint in futsal, emphasizes that “it is now possible to further develop a sports career and that even a woman can be a mother, start a family and then play”, since “There is a regulation, we football players are registered and there is a social security contribution that did not exist before.” Mariela Coronel, who is still active at 41, understands that “more important than the money you can get is the motivation and desire to do a sport that you are passionate about.”
Source: La Verdad
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