The Pride of Vallekas

Ahead of Barcelona B's visit to Rayo, it made sense to talk about the players who went from Rayo to Barcelona and from Barcelona to Rayo. This, part 1, talks about one of each. Hopefully there is a part 2... Jesús Landáburu was born in Guardo, Province of Palencia. He made his professional debuts at only 17 with Real Valladolid, quickly making an impression with the Segunda División side, his skills, field vision and set piece ability standing out alike. Landáburu made his La Liga debuts with Madrid-based Rayo Vallecano in the 1977–78 campaign: he majorly contributed to the modest team's maintenance of its top flight status during two seasons, after which he signed with league powerhouse FC Barcelona. Landáburu won his first piece of silverware with the Catalans in 1981, the Copa del Rey. However, after two good seasons, he struggled immensely in his last as Barça hired a new coach, German Udo Lattek. Landáburu moved subsequently to Atlético Madrid, being an automa...

Jeremy Beren is a journalism student who writes about Atlético on IntoTheCalderon.com . Follow him on Twitter here . Also, follow  Into the Calderón on Twitter here , like them on Facebook here , and check out their podcast Colchonero Chat  here  on iTunes. A bit about yourself and your background I'm Jeremy! I'm a journalism student at Arizona State University, just completed my first year there. I manage Into the Calderón, SB Nation's Atlético Madrid blog. I began writing there in Sept. 2015, and it's been great to have an outlet to write about Atlético and experiment with different types of articles - columns, ratings, reports, tactical analyses and especially our Colchonero Chat podcast, which I host on the site (find it on iTunes!). How long have you been a fan of Atlético Madrid and what made you support them in the first place? I became an Atlético fan during the 2012-13 season. I was relatively new to following football, and I was mesmerized by Radame...

Went five days without doing this, but yeah, one of those days again! I wrote about Jesús Gil on SBNation's Into the Calderon, exploring the facets of a man who managed to make a historic sports club, its youth academy, a historic city, and Spanish politics look like a joke. You can read it here .

So Zozulya has officially terminated his contract with Rayo and returned to Betis, where he can't play (but is allowed to sign for a fourth club outside Spain), and the relegation battle has never been tighter at this stage since the 1971-72 Segunda, with four points separating the bottom eight teams. And Marca cited the season incorrectly as the 1970-71 Segunda (read it here ): Yes, it was an innocent mistake. But the fact that it was Marca makes it really, really funny. Because I've been working on some other long-form pieces I almost don't want to post today. However, I was trying to find something quick to write about and....realized that there are no shortcuts. Quality content or no content at all. All or nothing.  So I focused on adding to a previous article on Spanish football politicians, given how much I love politics and football. And while updating a previous article is far less interesting than creating a new one and clicking "Publish", at...