The bitter wind to Mérida

The wind became Mérida’s worst rival this past weekend so far in 2022: it conditioned their first defeat of the Juanma Barrero era and, in addition, it broke all their plans to return home. At noon, the Messenger won 1-0 and, in the afternoon, the controllers suspended the flight back to Tenerife due to “strong gusts of wind.” The expedition from Mérida had no choice but to spend the night in La Palma and postpone the travel plan for today, Monday.

The delegate Fernando Torres, together with the Spanish Federation, was in charge of reorganizing the return so that the team returned home with the fastest possible plan. If it arrived last night in the capital of Merida (from La Palma to Tenerife and from Tenerife to Seville by plane and from Seville to Mérida by bus), the Mérida will now arrive this morning around 1:30 a.m., which will force it to change the work routine in the coming days. At 5:30 a.m. he took a ferry from La Palma to Tenerife, at 3:30 p.m. he will take a flight from Tenerife to Malaga and at 6:00 p.m. he will get on a bus on the way to Romano. So the team will rest tomorrow, Tuesday, and will start preparing for the match against Antequera next Sunday at the Romano on Wednesday.

The ten Roman fans who traveled to the island this weekend to cheer on the team, for their part, did not see their flight plan altered: they will travel to Madrid today, Monday, and from there to the capital of Mérida, just as they had prepared from the start.

And all this without points in the backpack for the first time this year. During the match, the wind was not the main responsible for the result and the discreet game of Mérida, but it did condition the game at all times. “There was no football as we know it,” reflects a day later Juanma Barrero from the Ferry. «The one who had the wind against him tried to move the ball away from his area and the one who had it in his favor, tried to get the other team into his. They put what they had, taking advantage of our mistake. In the first half and at the end of the second half, however, we didn’t take advantage of what we had. Now we have to think about getting home, resting and getting back to work to prepare for the Antequera game».

After two games in the previous stage and ten in the current one, Juanma Barrero suffered his first defeat as coach of Mérida this Sunday. “In football you also have to lose, so it was drama,” Nacho González pointed out from the island itself. The team is still at the same distance from both the second Cacereño and the sixth Montijo, but has seen how Ceuta has caught up with them in the standings and Villanovense has cut the distance. For the next day, the coaching staff recovers the sanctioned Lolo Pla and hopes to be able to count on Higor Rocha.