The Pride of Vallekas

Welcome back to the mini-series focusing on the technical players at Córdoba! This is part 2...you can read yesterday's piece - part 1 - here . Wow, two days in a row - that's a first! 24th August, 2014. It was Eibar's first ever goal in La Liga, in their first ever game in La Liga, their first La Liga Basque derby....their first of many. And it was a hell of a goal. In their own stadium, a player who was making his La Liga debut scored a free-kick from the tightest possible angle, just a few meters from the corner flag, just before half-time. The perfect kick of the ball to kick-start Eibar's dream season. The celebration by the 28-year-old said it all - not just the goal he had scored, but the struggle of being in that moment, in that stadium, in the top tier, in football at all, scoring a goal against a Europa league team. Exactly, four years before that goal, Javi Lara was without a team, having been released from yet another Segunda B side. By the...

It's a great quiz question - which player has played the most consecutive games as a substitute in the Segunda? With 40 games, that record goes to striker Ramón Pereira. 40 games, that even more weirdly, spanned six years and three clubs. This is that story Born in Mérida, Extremadura, Pereira went from hometown club CP Mérida to Atlético Madrid as a youth, and made his professional debut with the latter's reserves on 21 September 1997, in a 1-1 Segunda División away draw against Real Jaén where he came on as an 86th-minute substitute for Luis Tevenet. Used rarely - there in the 1997-98 season and at previous team Mérida the following season - he dropped down to Segunda División B where he played for Écija Balompié and Ponferradina during the 1999-00 season. Rarely used at Écija, he became a part of a historic squad in Ponferrada: on the last day of the season, Ponferradina occupied a position they hadn't occupied the entire season - higher than 16th. Yes, Ponfer...