Three years after hosting a Champions League final, the Wanda Metropolitano has experienced another planetary milestone this Saturday: a 'haka'.
A selection of New Zealand legends, the Classic All Blacks, performed it against the ojiplática Spain, some lions injured after the sanction that leaves them without their first World Cup in 24 years due to the improper alignment of the South African Gavin Van den Berg.
It was the window that Spanish rugby wanted, with the largest capacity in its history: almost 40,000 spectators.
This is how its captain, Fernando López, sums it up: “It should have been an absolute celebration;
now we want justice to be done, to show World Rugby that we deserve to be here, that the players are not to blame”.
The friendly fulfilled the script:
World Rugby's sanction was a bombshell for a group that had earned qualification on the pitch, with victories against Romania and Portugal, both benefiting from the applied point deduction.
They called for the resignation of the president of the Spanish Rugby Federation, Alfonso Feijóo, which was announced hours later, in order to "clean up" the management of national rugby.
“It was a huge disappointment, we didn't know what to do.
We were not prepared to digest it;
an athlete prepares to lose a match, not for something like that”.
Once the blow is assimilated, the locker room does not give up.
“We are going to try to fight it in the offices.”
His trick is that the sanction is disproportionate;
that Van den Berg played a few minutes in two games that Spain won by more than 40 points.
“At first people thought we cheated, but it was a scam.
From one thing to another there is an abyss.
We are not cheaters.
The punishment that is being given is the maximum.”
The appeal cannot discuss the proven fact – that the player was out of the country for more than the 60 days allowed per year to be selected and that three people falsified his passport to hide it – but rather the proportionality of the sanction.
“We have to reach an agreement with the federation to be protagonists in the appeal.
We want to show who was guilty;
Here we are the ones punished, the ones who did nothing”.
Spain, disappeared in the great spheres of rugby, has been world news after the sanction.
Part of the players' battle is to clean up that image.
“Little by little, people in other countries are realizing that we are victims.
They did us a great harm, not only to the players, but to the fans who leave weekends with his family to go to the Lions games”.
The duel against the veterans of the All Blacks has been an international cleaning exercise.
Almost a month has passed and the relationship with Van den Berg is non-existent.
“She disappeared from the map, she was erased.
Some of the guys called her, but she doesn't pick up."
There are those who believe that if the South African were to assume everything that happened in the first person, he would unload blame on Spain and could serve to reduce the sanction.
For others, the damage is already irreparable.
Despite the forcefulness of World Rugby's decision, which affected the recurrence of Spain, the captain does not lose hope.
“They are always on the side of the players;
if they listen to us, we would show them what the reality is and what we are experiencing”.
That of the South African was one of many arrivals of foreign players to the national team, such as that of López himself, an Argentine.
“It is done in all the teams in the world;
in the All Blacks there are Tongans, Samoans and even Australians.
Everyone who wears the León shirt does so one hundred percent out of love for the national team, that's what we try to convey: we play for a country and to take it to the top”.
The captain defends miscegenation.
“It is something very normal, more in Spain, a country that falls in love”.
But he asks, for the future, "to work more in the hotbed" with the base and "not depend so much on this."
Despite that feeling between mourning and vindication, the privilege of facing the most illustrious shirt in world rugby is not minor.
“In the end they are our idols.
It's like a movie, playing against the champions.
The opportunity to be in the front row of the 'haka' is incredible”.
Tana Umaga, the former captain of the All Blacks, also led the group of legends with world champions such as Conrad Smith or Jerome Kaino, among the most recent.
The illustrious roster of 19 players includes names like Corey Flynn, Nathan Harris, Jarrad Hoeata, Nick Crosswell, San Tuitupou and Luke McAlister.
Precisely McAlister received a memorable tackle from Álvaro Gimeno, who scored one of the four tries of a Spain surpassed at half-time (5-19) by rivals who qualify the passage of time with experience.
And talent.
Because gray hair hasn't messed up Stephen Donald's peephole when he kicks.
The result did not matter, the public accompanied the New Zealand rehearsals with waves.
It was a kind of welcome to the Mister Marshall of rugby.
The team pressed at the end with three trials in a row, but could not complete the comeback.
The XV del León lived a very emotional night, with a farewell atmosphere.
“If there is no World Cup, a new project has to come, it is the most sensible thing to do.
You have to start from scratch for another four or five years of work.
There are players who are not going to arrive because of their age;
they will be able to collaborate a little in the cycle, but it is the turn of the new generation”.
López asks to continue fighting: “This is not an end.
You have to go forward with everything.
If not in this one, in the next World Cup we have to be whatever it is”.
The dilemma is whether Spanish rugby can recover from two qualifying rounds with a dramatic ending, since in 2018 Spain was also sidelined for improper alignment.
“You don't have to pay for all the rugby.
You have to get rid of people who don't do things right and start from scratch.
We can't let it all end like this."
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