Hours after the exculpatory ruling on the alleged size of the Levante-Zaragoza party was made public, some of the acquitted players picked up the phone asking their trusted lawyers for advice. «Can Javier Thebes be sued?». As this newspaper has learned, several of the 36 players who have sat on the bench in this macroprocess now intend to counterattack the former president of the League and main testimony against them in the trial that has just closed.

«Whoever wants to sue me, but I must remind you that my complaint was investigated by the Police and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which was the one who filed the complaint based on the data obtained. When she was admitted, LaLiga appeared as an accusation then, ”replies Tebas, now a candidate to renew the position at the head of the professional football team.

This reaction of the players is very surprising in the League, when all the parties know perfectly the relief that some professionals of the ball have felt that have been threatened with very serious penalties. They were in real trouble during the first major trial for damage that has been carried out in Spanish football.

The accusation accepts the sentence, but remains convinced that the Levante-Zaragoza had a cat locked up. The money movements of the club maño, the striking statistics of the game, the summer without expenses of many players of the Valencian team, the runrun general of the football world with that duel where the permanence was played by the team that ended up winning the one that had nothing what to run that night ... In addition to those involved, the rest of national football watched the resolution of the thorny issue attentively.

'The 13' of the Quiniela

Also the bettors of the Quiniela that day marked a result other than 2 that finally fell in box five of that ticket of May 2011. Some of the 1,566 players who were left with 13 hits on that day had planned to denounce the accused , in the event that they had been convicted.

One of the only two convicted, the former president of Zaragoza, Agapito Iglesias , now faces a delicate immediate judicial scene. Valencia judge Manuel Aleis declared proven that he and his financial director, Javier Porquera, extracted 1.7 million euros from the club in the days prior to the meeting against Levante through a complex operation involving 11 employees "for a reason opaque and inconfesable ».

According to the ruling, the two convicted "fraudulently justified" the exit of 1.7 million euros from Zaragoza accounts with the payment of special bonuses to their players "for achieving permanence in the First Division." For all this they received a sentence of one year and three months in jail. Such punishment does not usually involve imprisonment, provided that no other conviction is received in the short term. This is the risk faced by Agapito Iglesias, cited in court in February 2020 accused of laundering and crime against the Treasury. In previous corruption cases in Zaragoza he has been acquitted.

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