• 60 years.The fifth Real Madrid European Cup against Eintracht

While the 'Effect 2000' threatened to render the country's computers inoperative, La Coruña feared that what ended up in the garbage was the League. Again. An underground fear that during the spring of 2000 no one dared to verbalize because it would not be. A 'meigallo' that the famous blue and white painted concrete mixers wanted to blast out of the city - their particular 'conxuro' - from the very first hour of that May 19. Maybe a League did deserve to get up early.

But to get to the big day you have to rewind to the summer of 99 and how the season was devised. Makaay and Víctor were the two outstanding signings, more effective than ostentatious names, as Augusto César Lendoiro , the historic Blue and Whites' president recalls : "Maybe he was not the most striking eleven starter in Spain, but he was the most competitive squad of all" .

"I told [Lendoiro] that playing League and Cup was not the same as adding a European match, for that a squad with players of a certain level was needed to be sure of rotations," recalls Javier Irureta , the coach who reached the League. Good feelings also felt by the captain, Fran , who thought they could do great things, although “winning a league was something else. Of course it starts and so much you go, so much you go ... ».

So much, so much so that Deportivo became the leader on the last day, as in 1994, that football drama that La Coruña remembers as a personal loss rather than a sporting one. Only Fran, Donato and Mauro Silva had been in that season. "I went down to the training locker with six games to go. It is the only time I have done it », recalls Lendoiro about the previous tension. That talk was to "prick a little. So that they would wake up and remember that they were leaders and they had a good final calendar ». The former president explains that the reason for the touch was the memory: "It seemed that the same thing could happen as in 1994. I saw the wolf's ears."

Six years and two titles - Copa del Rey and Spanish Super Cup of 1995 - had passed since the penalty missed by Djukic in that League final that left the 'Super Dépor' untitled, as the Arsenio Iglesias team was known . But if the story was to go about wolves and lambs, the Galician anthropological fatalism would be clear on who to recognize. The people of La Coruña changed the 'ufff ...' for the 'malaerá', the most optimistic expression in Galicia, to shake off the doubts. It was worth the tie and the undisguised joy settled before entering Riazor.

The party only waited three minutes, which took Donato to head a goal in a corner in the Espanyol area. "When you just start making marks, it gives you enormous peace of mind, you stop feeling like that year [in 1994] and you think 'this can't be escaped'," recalls Fran. Just in case, Makaay confirmed the suspicions by scoring the second before the break.

"It couldn't be like the other time," says Irureta, who remembers that match as "almost normal." In that almost a League fits, but there is no pride in it, only the aseptic definition of what it is to score fast and find out that Barcelona, ​​your rival for the title, is losing.

It is possible that no one in La Coruña can give any details of the second half. Nor does Irureta, who admits forgetfulness with laughter: "It's true, from the second part I remember people moving near the bench," he jokes. But she points to a possible reason for no one to remember her: "I'm sure we played calmly with the ball and that's not very striking."

The stands asked for the time almost before the break just for the desire to start celebrating as soon as possible, especially those who were going to make up six years that night. The field invasion was so predictable that it was strange that García-Aranda , the referee that day, did not signal the closure from his locker room. The final whistle sounded at the start of something new and the city exploded. Depor was champion.

One of the great cheesies of soccer is that it contracts a debt with you if you suffer a painful defeat, an axiom for which the greater drama lived, the greater reward. Thus, Deportivo's victory had an excess of banking metaphors over debt collections.

"It was a deserved League, not a due one," Lendoiro replies. «In football nobody owes anything to anyone. You win because you have to win », Irureta's pragmatism returns. "If true, football should owe Dépor more than one league," adds Fran, a phrase shared by the former president.

Unlike what is said about nails, one League does not get another. “The thorn is still there, perhaps it won't do the damage it did before; but it is, "admits the captain, remembering it. "Much more than half Spain wept that penalty," says Lendoiro.

For the 10 Blue and Whites, the game of those years should have materialized in some other title. The victory was a door that Deportivo always knocked on but did not open. A 'knock-knock' that rang strongly from the 1992/93 season to 2003/04: it was in the top three nine times out of 12 possible.

He managed to break the door down on May 19, 2000. The last champion of the 20th century and also the last new champion, since since then all the titles have fattened showcases, but he has not released any. It was the league from Djalminha to Mostovoi in the derby, that of his 'lambretta' against Real Madrid, that of the goal annulled Songo'o in Soria, three nostalgic screenshots of the year. The League from when Deportivo avenged Super Dépor.

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