Eddie's Final Whistle

The first competitive matches of the season started this week with the first round of the Copa Federacion, a competition which although is played at a National level by those clubs that didn’t qualify for the Spanish Copa Del Rey (clubs in 3rd and 2B Division only), starts of at local level and, as you progress in the competition, goes national. The following ties were played involving those clubs in the Valencian Community; on the break and at times make the higher division side look anything but a good side! For the record, Farisato opened the scoring for Alzira after 11 minutes and Jaime, just after half time, added a second. Alcoyano pulled one back with a goal from Eldin after 63 minutes and pushed really hard for an equaliser before they got caught on a counter attack and Javi Garcia, on 73 minutes, made it 1-3 to the visitors. Ismail rounded things off in the final minute taking advantage of a defensive error from the home side to make it 1-4 and all but killed the tie off. It is difficult to see Alcoyano being able to overturn the result from the first leg. Difficult but certainly not impossible yet I fully expect it to be Alzira who will go through to the next round of this competition. With a new manager in place (Vicente Mir) and expectation high again after what was seen as a very poor season last year, CD Alcoyano have once again been very active in the transfer market as they try, as always with this club, to be competing right to the very end of the season, for a Play Off place. For this level, CD Alcoyano are a big club. They have a long and proud history and have played at the top level of football in this country in the past (although it was in the 1940´s and 50´s). They played in the 2nd Division for the 2011/12 season before being relegated after just one season. However, they are one of those clubs who are normally fighting for a top four finish and for them, anything other than a top four finish is a disaster. vive at this level this season and try and grow from there. Hopefully past lessons will have been learned.