One hundred years, in the best of cases, are only fulfilled at once.
And the bad fortune for Deportivo Alavés has been that such a round anniversary has come to his life in the middle of a pandemic that conditions everything.
For more than a year the Vitorian club has been commemorating its centenary and many of the ideas and projects have had to be canceled or postponed until later, when Mendizorroza can boil again as it always has.
The positive is that, at least, the anniversary day has come with a jackpot.
Because it is this Saturday, January 23, when those 100 years are fulfilled and this Saturday when Real Madrid visits the Vitorian stadium, in which it is undoubtedly the most anticipated game of the year by all the Albiazul fans.
The memory of the fans still remains the memories of the victory in Valdebebas in November and also that of the game two seasons ago in Mendizorroza, with a goal by
Manu García
at the last moment that left
Julen Lopetegui
almost sentenced
.
The clash this Saturday does not know how it will end, but how it will begin.
There will be a kick-off and it will be performed by
Javier Berasaluce
, a life legend of the club, already 90 years old.
He was the goalkeeper with whom Alavés achieved the second promotion to First Division in their history in 1954, after 1930. After four years in Vitoria, the best of his career, as he himself has said, he signed for Real Madrid, achieving five European Cups as a substitute for
Alonso
and
Domínguez
.
Since he uses a wheelchair, it will be his
10-year-old
granddaughter
Uxue
who hits the ball on his behalf, thus uniting the present and future of the club.
Another visible initiative during the match will be the presence of a replica of the so-called Donato Marker.
It was for decades the manual marker used in Mendizorroza to inform the public of the result and owes its name to its historical manager,
Donato Díaz
.
He inherited that responsibility from his father in the 1940s and continued to exercise it until he was 82, retired due to the arrival of the first electronic scoreboard in Vitoria.
Apart from these two initiatives, Alavés is commemorating its centenary with the publication of a historical book and a deck of cards with the main legends of these 100 years, edited by Heraclio Fournier, also from Vitoria.
In addition, the artist
Mikel Izal
has composed a commemorative hymn that he interprets himself and the club is giving away 200 Albiazules flags for the city to be decked out in blue and white, remembering its past and looking towards its future.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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