“When the players went out, they were like ‘pfff, what a great atmosphere’,” Xabi Alonso said at the close of a night so long-awaited many didn’t make it, and many of those who did were actually experiencing primera for the first time. At the north end of the Carlos Tartiere, Real Oviedo’s fans prepared to reveal another gigantic work of art, 1,800 square metres of tifo sent tumbling across the terrace. Beneath the west stand, the city’s bagpipers got ready to play the Asturian anthem. Near the tunnel, Elena and Carlos, the embodiment of an entire generation, waited to kick it all off. And everywhere, in the city and the stadium, there was blue. Into it all, Real Madrid stepped on Sunday night. And, their manager said, it was “spectacular”.
They had missed it. The last time Madrid had been to Oviedo was 10 June 2001, the last first division game in the Tartiere. That day, a fortnight after Oviedo had beaten Barcelona at the Camp Nou, they drew 1-1 with Vicente del Bosque’s side, Santi Solari scoring. “I prefer to forget it,” Veljko Paunovic says, but he can’t. “We missed so many chances; I had two, one hit the bar.” A win and Oviedo would have been safe; instead, seven days later they lost 4-2 at Mallorca and were relegated. It took 24 years to return to primera, nine days more to do so at home. Coincidence, or perhaps a kind of closure, decided it would be against the same team as the last time, 8,841 days later.
