Sportsblog: A blessed madness. Depor daring to dream big once again

It felt right that some of our number from Portlaoise were at the Riazor on Sunday and will be again when the the club and the city celebrates Deportivo’s return to the light. My brother Kev would love that, all of it.

LOCAL HERO: Lucas Perez

They came in their thousands and they came early. Kick-off was still seven hours distant and the Calle San Juan, one of the city’s main thoroughfares, was even then a riot of colour and joy and expectation as the faithful sang their songs and drank their beers and dared to believe.

The giant tifo unfurled behind one of the goals at the Estadio Riazor later on Sunday read ‘Os tempos son chegados’. It’s a line from the Galician national anthem and it means ‘Our time has come’. Here, now, after so many years on a road to nowhere, was a corner ready to be turned. Deportivo La Coruna were poised to go up.

Momentum was on their side. A season that had started horribly, with one win in their first eight games that left them languishing in 15th by mid-October, had turned utterly. There had been only one defeat in 2024 – one! - and it meant that a win against Barcelona Atlètic, their nearest challenger, would be enough.

It has been six years since the club once dubbed ‘Super Depor’ last played La Liga football. For the last four of those seasons they had been stuck in the ignominy of the third tier, the Primera Federación. Financial problems have dogged the club off the pitch, cruel fortune and shortcomings had hamstrung them on it.

Depor have endured too many end games when they slipped through the relegation trap door or came up just short of promotion, but they did the necessary against Barca’s ‘B’ team. The 1-0 win secured their place in the Segunda División next season, and with two games still to play.

The fairytale feel to the day was enshrined in the goalscorer.

Lucas Pérez had taken an enormous pay cut and stumped up half-a-million euro from his own pocket to buy out his contract with La Liga club Cadiz and return to his hometown club. A “blessed madness,” he said of that decision after a stunning free-kick at the weekend that was his 12th goal in a season embellished by 17 assists.

“What I remember is my grandmother,” he was quoted as saying in El Mundo. “That if she had seen this today, she would be proud to raise a child like Lucas, who has fought what he has fought. That is my satisfaction, the only thing I want.

“May my grandparents have that memory of me, that I am a good person who has fought and fought, who has fulfilled the dreams of many children … Let what Deportivo has done be heard throughout the world, that we are going to return.” 

Needless to say the party that erupted spanned the night.

Fireworks shot high into the sky after darkness fell and the roll call of well-wishers exploded on social media. Some of their former greats - Bebeto and Walter Pandiani, among them - joined the chorus. “May this be just the beginning of a new path of victories,” Mauro Silva wrote on Instagram.

Football doesn’t lend itself to brotherly love between clubs. Rivalries can be fractious, bitter affairs borne out of geography and history and the unromantic realities of what is a professional industry, but Depor’s resurrection has met with a deep well of affection from near and far.

Celta Vigo, their great Galician rivals, were among those hailing their achievement. Other La Liga sides chimed in. Osasuna, Girona, and. Cadiz, Lucas’s last team. Javier Tebas, president of La Liga, got in on the act. “A victory that is more than you, because it is everything in Galician sport,” said Alfonso Rueda, holder of the highest office in the region.

There in the midst of all this glorious madness on Sunday was a small crew from Portlaoise. More again are due out in a fortnight, for the last game of the season at home to Real Unión, when the club, the city and its people get to party all over again. These are lads who have been making the pilgrimage for years now.

My brother Kevin had been one of them.

I wrote about Kev and this beautiful, unlikely bond between the northwest of Spain and a random town in the Irish midlands last June. He had passed away from cancer at the age of 52 in January and we had spread his ashes on the beach beside the stadium and elsewhere in Galicia, and laid a wreath in his memory at the Riazor.

Depor, Á Coruna and our friends in the city have mourned with us and they have honoured Kev with their compassion and their friendship. It feels right that some of our number were there with them, and will be again later this month, as the club and the city celebrates Deportivo’s return to the light.

Kev would love that, all of it.