Sin categoría
From purgatory to Second Division B
After 14 years, Eivissa is back in Second Division B. And it’s done it in style.
It’s 13 years since there was an Ibizan team in this category –la Peña Deportiva was the last one, in the season 1993-94-, which means that the fans will be able to enjoy once more a league of higher quality than the boring –without wishing to cause offence- third Balearic of always.
There would appear to be no end to Eivissa’s ambition, and their president, Pedro Ortega Cano, has said that from now on, the aim of the club is to go up to Second A as soon as possible, the silver category of Spanish national football.
If the public responds as it has during the promotion play-offs to Second B (4000 people flocked to the ground for the second play-off match), then Eivissa, of course, deserves a team in the Second Division A, a height never before achieved by a team from the small islands.
However, it would seem prudent that the first step be to consolidate the team in a tricky division, in whose four groups you’ll find big budgets and teams with big names, like Lleida, Real Oviedo, Rayo Vallecano, Español B or Real Madrid B, amongst others.
The first objective of this Eivissa should now be to equal or better, if they can, their foregoers, the SD Ibiza, which in the 1992-93 season finished 10th in the Second B division and even, in January and February 1993, were top of the table under the management of the Catalan Roberto Puerto.
Nowadays, after a long and busy spell in the wilderness, Eivissa once again takes the top spot in Second B after the islands most representative club – especially in terms of history, achievements and fans – was under threat of disappearance that sad summer of 1993.
Waste.
The imprisonment for tax evasion of the club’s former treasurer Calixto Bragantini dried up the club’s funds, despite the investment of around a hundred million of the old pesetas in the 92-93 season and a similar quantity the previous year.
The club, which had way overspent, couldn’t pay the players what they’d been promised, and the now famous lock-in in the Can Misses stadium occurred leading to the club being reported to the players’ association.
And SD Ibiza went down, in a stroke, from Second B to Regional Preferente. A fiasco for the fans, who every fortnight had filled the stadium to follow the trajectory of their team.
In order to go back up to Third with the name SD Ibiza it was necessary to cancel the debt and nobody could, or wanted to, take over the financial responsibility for the club, so it simply ceased to be and made space for two simultaneous projects: the Union Deportiva Ibiza and the Sa Deportiva Eivissa.
Only the latter survived, which since this last 24th June (a date to remember) is a new team of Second B.
Although the past cannot be changed, it’s always worth remembering to avoid falling in the same mistakes, those that in their day led SD Ibiza into bankruptcy, from glory to failure in the blink of an eye.
Both the current President, Pedro Ortega, and the Vice-president, Marci Rojo, along with the whole island, are dreaming (and why not?) of a non too distant day when Eivissa play in Saecond A. May it be so. And on the way may they not commit the mistakes which had the local fans in purgatory for 14 years.
