Atlético de Madrid have just sacked their coach, Mexican Javier Aguirre, after a run of poor results which has seen them all but give up on repeating this season’s rare Champions’ League appearance. The sacking has not been a popular move among the fans, but the new appointment has been even more unpopular among the fans of second division Castellón, hopeful of promotion back to the Primera for the first time in a long time.
Aguirre’s replacement is Castellón’s coach, Toledo-born Abel Resino, a relatively new manager who already made his mark on the Spanish second division when he almost took fledgling club Ciudad de Murcia up in his first season as a coach. In spite of this success, his is a surprising appointment considering he has barely twenty-five matches’ experience in the top flight, and Atlético fans are complaining that the club’s management are dragging the club down to second-division standards.
However, Resino is an old favourite of Atlético fans, having played 243 times for the club between 1986 and 1995. He was one of their most legendary goalkeepers, and his particular claim to fame is that he lasted 1,275 minutes without conceding a goal during the 1990-1991 season. In this respect, he is definitely the man to beat.
Admittedly, between Edwin van der Sar and Abel Resino stand such goalkeeping giants – not always ironically - as Senol Gunes, Gaetan Huard, Dimitar Ivankov, Vitor Baia and Chris Woods, but not even the most fervent supporter could claim that the Turkish, French, Bulgarian, Portuguese and Scottish leagues are anywhere near as hard as the Spanish first division.
Ahead of Resino is Danny Verlinden of Club Brugge, but again, even my nan could stop your average Belgian striker. Oh yes, then there’s Geraldo Pereira de Matos Filho of Brazil, who claims to have gone something like thirteen seasons without conceding, but by all accounts he collected clean sheets like Romario collected goals – twenty minutes in the back garden against his five-year-old son, and so on. (Brazilian football’s amazing – they give us Garrincha and Zico, then produce muppets like Pereira and Romario.)
The question is: can van der Sar reach Resino’s 1,275 minutes? He needs to last all of the West Ham game and pretty much all of the Fulham match too – easy pickings, I would have thought.
The other question is: where are Atlético going to end up with a second-division manager? In four matches’ time they face Barcelona, who scored three past them in the first eight minutes last time they met. Doesn’t bode well, does it?
The third question is: can United overcome Barcelona to win the Champions’ League again this year?)
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