Real Zaragoza

Real Zaragoza
	Real Zaragoza
Basic data
Surname	Real Zaragoza SAD
Seat	Zaragoza , Spain
founding	1932
president	Christian Lapetra
Website	realzaragoza.com
First soccer team
Head coach	Víctor Fernández Braulio
Venue	La Romareda
Places	34,596
league	Segunda División
2019/20	3rd place
home	Away

Real Saragossa (Spanish Real Zaragoza ) is a Spanish football club from Saragossa in Aragon . It was founded on March 18, 1932 and has so far completed 58 seasons in the Primera División . The club has won a European Cup twice : in 1964 the trade fair cup , a forerunner of today's UEFA Europa League , and in 1995 the European Cup Winners' Cup . Real Saragossa also won the Copa del Rey , the national Spanish cup competition, six times . The club's venue is La Romareda , which can seat almost 35,000 spectators. Real Zaragoza has been playing in the Segunda División , the second Spanish division, since 2013 .

Club history

founding

The Real Saragossa club was formed in 1932 when the clubs Iberia SC and the club Zaragoza FC , known by different names , the two main football clubs in Saragossa, merged. The new club was allowed to call itself Real Saragossa, since Club Zaragoza had merged with a club called Stadium in 1925 . This in turn had received the royal privilege in 1922 to be able to call himself Real Sociedad Atlética Stadium .

Stadion

Side view of the stadium

Until 1957 they played in the old torero stadium. The La Romareda stadium designed by Francisco Riestra , which has been a fully seated stadium for 32,400 spectators since 1994, was inaugurated after nine months of construction on September 8, 1957 with the game Real Saragossa against CA Osasuna (final score 4: 3). Three preliminary round matches were held here at the 1982 World Cup . For the unsuccessful candidacy of the Pyrenees city Jaca to host the 2014 Winter Olympics , the Romareda Stadium was intended as the Olympic stadium.

After several years of discussions about a new stadium, the city of Zaragoza decided in June 2004 that a new stadium for 40,000 spectators should be built at the position of the Romareda stadium. The plan was to renew half of the grandstands in two phases by around 2007. On March 17, 2006, a court ruled a lawsuit against the stadium construction plan, so that construction work had to be stopped on the day it began. There is currently no new plan for a more modern stadium.

Conversion into a sports company

In 1992 Real Zaragoza was the first Spanish football club to be converted into a sports stock corporation ( Sociedad Anónima Deportiva , SAD), with mattress manufacturer Alfonso Soláns Serrano acquiring 51% of the shares. He also took over the presidency, which he took over from longtime President José Ángel Zalba (1971–78, 1988–92). In 1996 he handed this over to his son Alfonso Soláns Soláns. At the end of May 2006, he sold his block of shares, which comprised around 86%, to Agapito Iglesias, the owner of Codesport, a company in the construction, real estate and logistics sectors based in Saragossa. The new President of Real Zaragoza was then Eduardo Bandrés , who gave up his post as Minister of Economics for the Autonomous Region of Aragon. On December 30, 2008, Bandrés resigned, majority shareholder Iglesias took over the presidency.

Athletic career

After three one and two-year guest appearances in the 1940s and 1950s, the club has been a member of the Primera División almost continuously since the 1956/57 season . Relegations in the 1970/71, 1976/77 and 2001/02 seasons were followed by direct re-ascents. In the all-time league table of the Primera División, Real Saragossa are ninth after the 2006/07 season.

The 1960s

In the mid-1960s, Real Saragossa experienced one of the most successful periods in the club's history with the team of the "Glorious" (Spanish: Los Magníficos , based on the film " The Glorious Seven "). The team around strikers Canario, Santos, Marcelino, Villa and Lapetra made it to the Spanish Cup final four times in a row, which they won in 1964 and 1966 and lost in 1963 and 1965. In 1964, Real Saragossa also won the trade fair trophy .

The 1970s and 1980s

In the mid-1970s, Real Zaragoza signed several internationals from Paraguay such as Felipe Santiago Ocampos and Saturnino Arrúa . This generation of players, which went down in the club's history under the word game Los Zaraguayos, was runner-up in the 1974/75 season and lost the cup final in 1976.

In 1986 the team finally won the Spanish Cup for the third time. They won 1-0 against FC Barcelona with a goal from Rubén Sosa.

The 1990s

In 1991, when coach Ildo Maneiro resigned, the era under Víctor Fernández began . He had previously trained the Deportivo Aragón branch , was appointed Maneiro's successor at the age of 30 and was able to avert the impending relegation, which is why the interim solution became a commitment that would last until November 1997. Led by Fernández, Real Zaragoza won the Spanish Cup in 1994 and its second international trophy, the European Cup Winners' Cup, the following season . In the final against Arsenal FC , Nayim overcame England goalkeeper David Seaman with an arc lamp from 45 meters in the 120th minute and scored the decisive 2-1.

After the end of the Fernández era, the team needed to be rejuvenated. Under coach Chechu Rojo , Paco Jémez and goalkeeper Juanmi, among others, became young Spanish national players. In 1998, they signed the Yugoslav Savo Milošević from Aston Villa , who scored 38 goals in two seasons before moving to AC Parma in 2000 . From January to June 2002 Milošević played again for Zaragoza.

The 2000s

Real Saragossa won the Spanish Cup again in 2001 and 2004 despite only average league placements and relegation in the 2001/02 season. At the start of the following season 2004/05 the team also won over the Spanish Super Cup against FC Valencia . In 2006 the team was again in the final. In the semi-final first leg, Real Madrid were defeated 6-1 by four goals from Diego Milito ( hat trick in the first half) and two goals from Ewerthon , so that even a 0-4 in the second leg was enough to reach the final. Saragossa had already prevailed against FC Barcelona in the quarter-finals (4: 2, 1: 2). In the final, however, they lost to Espanyol Barcelona 1: 4.

The new club owner Agapito Iglesias signed the successful coach of the 1990s, Víctor Fernández , as a new coach from the 2006/07 season. This season, midfield director Pablo César Aimar , among others, moved from Valencia CF to Zaragoza. At the end of the 2006/07 season, Saragossa finished 6th in the Primera División, the best placement since the turn of the millennium. Fernández's second era was significantly shorter than the first, as the coach was sacked on January 13, 2008 after poor results in the league and Zaragoza's elimination in the first round of the UEFA Cup against Aris Saloniki . He was succeeded by Ander Garitano , who played in Saragossa from 1995 to 2002. But this resigned after about 10 days due to differences with the club management about playmaker Andrés D'Alessandro as coach. The attempt to calm the situation down with veteran Javier Irureta also failed, although D'Alessandro was subsequently transferred to CA San Lorenzo de Almagro in Argentina. Irureta resigned after just six match days due to lack of success (only one win). His successor was Manuel Villanova , who had previously trained SD Huesca . On May 18, 2008, Real Zaragoza sealed relegation to the Segunda División on the last day of the Primera División with a 2: 3 defeat against RCD Mallorca . For the 2008/09 season Marcelino García Toral was coach in Zaragoza. The team managed to return directly to the first division as second in the table. The former Bundesliga professional Gerhard Poschner (including VfB Stuttgart and Borussia Dortmund) worked there as general director.

2010 until today

At the end of the Primera División 2012/13 , the club had to relegate as bottom of the table in the Segunda División . After a weaker season in the second division and financial problems threatening their existence, Real Zaragoza only narrowly failed to return to the top Spanish division the following year. As sixth in the table, they qualified for the playoffs, clearly losing their first game at home with 0: 3 against Girona , then won the second leg in Catalonia 4: 1 and thus still had the final of the playoffs against UD Las Palmas due to the away goals rule reached. A 3: 1 in the home stadium was followed by a 0: 2 defeat on Gran Canaria and so this time the opponent used the away goal rule and rose to the top class. In the following years, the qualification for the promotion playoffs succeeded again, in which one drew the short straw against CD Numancia , but sometimes the club was also close to the relegation zone.