2023-07-21 13:47:49
BarcelonaRonaldinho was magic. The smile he wore every time he stepped on the turf was comparable to the spectacle of watching him play. Football made him happy and turned his huge filigrees into visual pleasure. There was no rival who took it as a provocation, rather they applauded him. With his farewell, some Blaugrana players, like Jordi Colomé, turned off. The longing to not see the Brazilian star play made him lose his enthusiasm for football. But Recreativo de Huelva, the dean of Spanish football, seduced him: he had recovered that sparkle in his eyes, that desire to see a team no matter what.
Jordi is from Vilobí del Penedès (Barcelona) and his family is Catalan. The “Barça, Barça, Barça!” it was the most recurring song in his house and he celebrated team victories every two to three. However, in 2006 everything changed. A team had thrashed Capello’s Real Madrid 0-3 at the Bernabéu, beaten Atlético de Madrid 1-0 and Valencia 2-0: it was Recre. A club that, without making any noise, would sneak into Jordi’s life.
It was a time when the latest fashion was minute and result, a sports program in which the goals of the League teams were sung. But Colomé only had eyes for one team, a club from Huelva with an incredible tendency to score in the last few minutes. Journalists repeated countless times “We’re going to the Nuevo Colombino with the Recre because… they’ve scored, haven’t they?” while an incomparable tirírí-tirírí resounded with each goal, a melody that seduced Jordi more and more.
Ronaldinho’s departure from Barça only accelerated a process that was gaining more and more strength. “Being part of Barça is very easy, but being part of Recre is very beautiful”, he assures ARA. What’s more, it even had a best practices guide on how to be one recreativista: “You need to have a strong heart, controlled tension, patience and prepare to hold your nerve for 90 minutes”.
The first time that Colomé heard the chants of “Alé, Recreational, alé, alé” live was in his first Recre game, against Nàstic, in the 2010-11 season. El Degà had dropped from the football elite of Primera but had remained proudly in Segona. In addition, Jordi was already a recreativista fully entitled: the team’s photographer provided him with tickets to see his Recre and he had even made friends with other Catalans who dreamed of making the Peña Recreativista Cataluña Albiazul. The WhatsApp group was blowing smoke.
With the relegation to Segona B in the 2014-15 season, the Dean received a bucket of cold water. El Recre would no longer return to Catalonia and the excitement of those Catalan fans faded away, like the notifications of the WhatsApp group. The team kept the category the following year, but it was financially shaky and the possibility of disappearing was real. To the debts were added non-payments to workers and players for 20 months, protests and the closure of the stadium. Everything hung in the balance, it was fight or die. And it was the first choice. Jordi, like many fans, did his bit to give oxygen to the Dean and keep him breathing. The debt was settled on the last day of the term. “Being at Recre, you are used to falling, knowing how to suffer, but also to rebuild yourself. I have come to cry for this team”, he explains.
Distance is not a problem for Jordi Colomé to go to Recre games
After overcoming the months of the pandemic and the limited capacities, now nothing prevents Jordi from seeing his Recre. That Huelva is at the other end of the country is not a problem. Well, once yes, when they were playing for promotion in the play-off of First RFEF and had an accident with his vehicle on the way. If not, there’s always the plane: “My sister has been a Recre fan for three years and we don’t hesitate to take a Barcelona-Seville plane and run to Nuevo Colombino de Huelva when there’s a game.”
In Barcelona, Xavi’s team is looking to recover that radiance of the Ronaldinho era with figures like Lewandowski. But, despite everything, Jordi says that “there is only one Ronaldinho: he put the ingredients to a play so that it would turn out perfect”. For now, he has promised that he will not buy any FIFA for Play until Recre, now in Primera RFEF, is promoted to the professional category. In the meantime, he is satisfied with the 2015 edition and will continue to fill the longing for that time with a new memory: “When I enter Huelva on Avinguda Andalusia I think: “What “Is it 1,200 km to see the dean of Spanish football? I feel like I’m at home. I get goosebumps and my heart races.”
#longer #Barça #Im.. #Recreativo #Huelva