The “Where Are We Again?” Round

By: Al | October 28th, 2008

Like every other Primera División team, we are also playing a little-known lower division team in this round of the Copa Del Rey (unless you’re Bilbao and Recre). We have been assigned the task of entertaining Orihuela CF from Segunda División Group 3, the league that hosts a variety of B teams of many big clubs such as Barcelona, Espanyol, and Villarreal.

So where is this Orihuela place? My reaction to hearing this name made me scratch my head and drool. Orihuela is located in the east part of Spain, in the lower Valencian region and close to Murcia (remember their team last season?).

A couple of Orihuela pictures, as it’s quite the pretty town:

I have an affinity for pretty houses, so forgive my bad selection of photos.

Orihuela CF plays in Municipal Los Arcos, a 5,000 seater. Obviously, a huge change from the 54,000+ that the Vicente Calderón holds.

Orihuela is currently in 18th place in the Seguna Grupo 3. From this video, this is what I concluded about the club:

-Jesus Christ himself is the manager
-The club president is probably less than 10 years older than me
-The vice president is probably less than 10 years older than me and wears a cool t-shirt.
-The team’s jerseys look store-bought from a K-mart (unless that was them training in the video)

We can expect to win this match, but one of the rules of football is to never underestimate. Can Orihuela win? I have no clue, but I do know is that they probably won’t be as star-struck playing Atlético Madrid, unlike if they played Real Madrid or Barcelona (both teams take up about 60% of the support in Spain, if I’m not mistaken).

A good chance for the club to earn some revenue, win or lose.

Here are the players that will travel there:

Leo Franco, Bernabé, Antonio López, Pernía, Perea, Pablo, Alvaro Domínguez, Raúl García, Luis García, Ever Banega, Miguel de las Cuevas, Camacho, Keko, Alex Quillo, Forlán y Sinama-Pongolle.

Manager Aguirre kindly told the press what the starting XI may be:

Leo Franco; Antonio López, Pablo, Perea, Pernía; Camacho, Raúl García, Luis García, Miguel de las Cuevas; Sinama-Pongolle y Forlán.

Still a star-studded lineup. Nice to see some youngsters get a chance to play. No Aguero again (being rested for Mallorca), and no Seitaridis, Coupet and Ujfalusi due to injury.

Much respect to the little sides, as some of my family supports a tiny club in Mexico. But poor Orihuela is going down.

-On another note, Kun Aguero received the Trofeo EFE for being the best Latin American player in La Liga. This was a good chance for people to praise el Kun and for the club president Enrique Cerezo to express his love by telling people that Kun is going nowhere. Very unecessary, since the convenience store down the street sells “Maradona and Moratti Repellant”. (By the way, Diego is the new Argentina manager. HAHAHA WHAT?!)