It is not easy to get to lead a program on the competitive sports radio on Sunday nights. Nor is it easy for it to happen that they are Asturians who do it from channels like Cope, Ser, Onda Cero and Radio Marca. Things are even more complicated if, in addition, it turns out that they are four well-known sportinguistas. Pedro Pablo Parrado, Juanma Castaño, Antón Meana and Edu Pidal coincide today at the head of their respective programs in an event with a difficult precedent. “It shows that Asturias is a great radio school,” they emphasize.
Hours after Sporting play their match in Andorra, four of the most renowned Asturian and Sportinguista voices in Spanish journalism will turn on their microphones to compete in the day with the most football on the radio. The four represent different generations and have, in some cases, a curious bond that unites them beyond their roots. “I was one of those who opened the gap on Spanish radio, on Ser, in Madrid. Imagine what it was like to be there, in the seventies, at the age of 24 or 25,” comments Pedro Pablo Parrado. The man from Gijón, a veteran of the airwaves, has brought his historic “Goles” to Radio Marca, where he has taken charge of the evening program this year. “He excites me and gives me a lot of satisfaction. It is a privilege and a luxury,” he adds about the fact of coinciding on the grid with three other Asturians on the airwaves.
Parrado has been a reference for many and also one of the people who, he says, wanted to take Juanma Castaño to Madrid when he heard him in Ser Gijón. “He was a very radio player, I liked him. So I was on Radio Spain and I wanted to sign him. In the end, Paco González took him,” he details. Juanma now leads “El Partidazo de Cope” on Cadena Cope, consolidated among the most listened to throughout the country. “I always liked helping Asturians. I did bring Gaspar Rosety to Madrid and I also positioned Pipi Estrada a bit. Then we all knew each other,” she explains. She also knows “Carlitos” well, the father of Antón Meana, who tonight will take the reins of another sports information giant, “El Larguero”, on Cadena Ser, together with Carlos Fité. “They went to the Jovellanos Institute together. Since I was a child, with Parrado already a star in ‘Goles’, my father has been reminding me of the study trip they did together to Mallorca,” recalls Antón.
He, Antón, has words of praise for his colleagues and for many others “whom, in some way, we have been picking up the baton”. “That four Asturian journalists coincide presenting a night program at the same time after an important League day shows the good health of Asturian sports radio, how important journalism is in our region, and the legacy that people like Gaspar have left us Rosety, Manfredo Álvarez, Pipi Estrada and Osvaldo Menéndez”, emphasizes the man from Gijón. “But what seems incredible to me, it’s not just that we are four Asturians who coincide, it’s that on top of that we are from Sporting!” He remarks loquaciously.
The one who has been taking over on Onda Cero from a myth like the already retired José Ramón de la Morena is the llanisco Edu Pidal, who today will once again be at the controls of the mythical “Radioestadio”, in its night edition. “In the profession it is said that it seems that there is an Asturian everywhere. Well, much more so in sports journalism,” he points out. He likes to emphasize that, “like Juanma and Antón, I came from the Ser Gijón youth academy, although we never agreed on the same newsroom”. With Meana he has shared years as reporters covering “big events such as the Champions League finals. Many colleagues like Bustillo or De la Morena have talked to me about Parrado. I think that everyone, wherever we go, boasts of Asturias, of being Asturian and of being sportinguistas”.