Eibar and Granada are the two new teams in the F League. Basques and Andalusians will occupy the places of the relegated Alhama and Alavés next season, returning to the top flight. Eibar already had their ticket to the First Division in their own right, by finishing first in the regular league. Granada, for its part, has had to fight against Deportivo Abanca, the favorite in the promotion playoff.
Higher ranked in the regular season, Deportivo fell heavily (2-0) in the first leg a week ago at Nuevo Los Cármenes. With the return in Abegondo, in front of their fans, the people from A Coruña have been better on the field of play, but the result has not been enough for them. The ex of Barça or Espanyol, Ainhoa ​​MarÃn, has put the emotion in 88, since Irene Ferreras’s men only needed a draw, having finished better than Granada in the regular league. But Roger Lamesa’s men managed to resist until the final whistle and win the tie by a 2-1 aggregate.
The Catalan coach, in statements to La Vanguardia, has expressed his joy for this well-deserved promotion and has valued the great season carried out by Granada, reaching the quarterfinals of the Copa de la Reina and eliminating Osasuna and Deportivo, favorites for promotion, in the playoff to go up.
“Our objective this season of restructuring the categories was to stay in the First Federation. Obviously we were ambitious and we wanted to try to go a little further. The good performance we did in the Copa de la Reina helped us take the pressure off and we were able to round off the job by qualifying for the playoffs”, explains Lamesa.
Granada has been undone by Osasuna and Deportivo “teams that were not only designed to rise, but have a lot of individual talent and they have deserved it,” acknowledges the coach. Lamesa has acknowledged that Deportivo today has been “even a little better” than his team, but he stresses that they have “been able to resist” and have benefited from the fact that the goal from La Coruña came in the last few minutes. “We are very happy with the great work of the team. Now let’s enjoy it and, calmly, we’ll think about the next few weeks of next year.”
Granada will return to the First Division a decade later. He was a member of the top flight in the 2013-14 season, but was relegated that same year along with Levante Las Planas, a team with which they will meet again next season in the F League.
In the case of Eibar, their journey through the second category has been shorter, and they will return to the elite just one year after being relegated. For both the Andalusians and the Basques, it will be their first season in a professional league.
