For the first time in weeks, it feels like there will be a relegation battle in Spain after all. And Leganés will be in it
Sporting Gijón haven’t got a prayer, but they might just have a little hope at last. The miracle arrived in the week they stopped asking for it – and the week they needed it most. The week Granada and Osasuna needed it, too. “Resurrection Sunday”, one headline called it, and it was huge: a match that felt like all their fates hung on it, even with 17 weeks still to go. “We have to win, come what may; we can’t afford another defeat,” the Sporting coach Joan Ferrer, ‘Rubi’, said. “Salvation will depend largely on what we do at Butarque; it’s very important to win,” the Leganés coach Asier Garitano said. As for Father Fernando Fueyo, he didn’t say anything.
Fueyo is 80 years old and he is the parish priest of San Nicolás de Bari in Gijón. He is also the chaplain at Sporting. On Friday afternoon, he arrived at Mareo, the club’s training ground, to wave off the team as they boarded the bus bound for Madrid, where they would be facing Leganés, but he wasn’t there at Butarque the following day. For 20 years, he has gathered them together in the dressing room just before every match, and recited the Lord’s Prayer. On Sunday, for the first time in two decades, he didn’t. Rubi had decided that he didn’t want the distraction: in those final minutes, it should be just players, coaching staff and the game ahead.
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