They compete in a category with fields in which a couple of thousand spectators enter, but this Tuesday Deportivo gathered more than 10,000 followers just to attend the presentation of a footballer.
"I'm not going to play in the First RFEF, I'm going to play for Deportivo," Lucas Pérez settled to the astonishment of those who do not understand the decision to leave the highest category of Spanish football and go down two rungs.
There are reasons that only the heart understands and the 34-year-old footballer from A Coruña puts them before other considerations, even though he has closed a link that unites him with the club until 2026 as a footballer and three more years in its structure.
"I'm not talking about money.
The only thing I do is come to my house so that my team can take advantage of my last years of my career”.
And he reiterated something that can be verified by looking at his professional career:
“I don't tie myself to contracts.
At the moment that Deportivo believes that I am not valid, they can talk to me ”.
Hoxe ás 7, or Neno returns home pic.twitter.com/YCFm4dwBav
– RC Deportivo (@RCDeportivo) January 3, 2023
Lucas risks for a dream.
This Friday he should be with Cádiz in Mestalla to play against Valencia, but what he will do is watch weapons to face Unionistas de Salamanca in Riazor.
Deportivo is fourth in the third category of Spanish soccer and accumulates millions in losses that its owner, the financial entity Abanca, assumes every season that it fails to return to professional soccer.
And it's already on the third.
That appointment on Sunday in the Riazor is expected to be massive.
The club, one of the nine champions of the Spanish league, has more than 24,000 members.
Between Celta, Lugo, Pontevedra, Racing de Ferrol, UD Ourense and Compostela they don't have that many.
Lucas stopped at that fact during the presentation.
His return transcends football in a city that beats for his team.
“I know I have pressure.
No problem.
I love her, thank you.
But if it were up to me, I would go out and play right now.
I've been doing this for many years and I've already played in Riazor, huh?
With Deportivo he played 93 games in the First Division, scored 32 goals and added 20 assists.
In the First Division.
“There it could be now and in the years to come.
The commitment is very high”, explained the sports president Antonio Couceiro.
“We are a great club and we do it together.
We hope to celebrate the promotion”, predicted the leader.
"Hopefully," Lucas interrupted him, who wanted to be especially understanding with Cádiz, a club he leaves behind after scoring last matchday and in which he was a key player in the battle to remain in the top flight.
“They have always behaved very well.
The people there have the same feeling for their team that we from A Coruña have for ours and that's why they understand me.
I am only moved by happiness and illusion.
I wanted to go home," the footballer confessed.
A veteran in a world of football in which it was not easy for him to settle down, Lucas is the same expansive guy as always, the boy from the Monelos neighborhood who stood out as a child in the grassroots football fields of A Coruña, but to whom Deportivo always gave the back until, finally, at the age of 26, he fulfilled a childhood dream that never expires.
He had previously had to play in Vitoria, Vallecas, Lviv, kyiv or Thessaloniki.
It was his first return home, the second, on loan from Arsenal, ended in relegation to Second: "Every night when I go to sleep I remember that year."
The gasoline of the rematch now propels him to take the road home for the third time.
And the people follow him: "We went to B, they're going to see us come back," he chanted with Riazor.
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