It was an open secret: Mario Simón will not fulfill his third season on the bench of Real Murcia. It was palpable in the environment, especially in some grana fans who do not forgive the man from La Mancha that Real Murcia fell at a key moment of the course and was left without playing the ‘playoff’.
Simón has to pack his bags, although he has reached a milestone that most of the coaches who went through the Murcia bench did not achieve. And it is that the man from La Mancha, despite the delicate moments that he went through in his grana journey, managed to resist two complete exercises, a record previously held by only six coaches in the club’s centenary history.
Errors can be attributed to Simón, such as the erroneous readings of certain matches, the constant changes of the system during them without giving them time to take effect, the blind bet on soccer players who have not given the expected performance to the detriment of others who already whether they were established in the team or not to carry their beliefs and approaches to the end, but they also gave Real Murcia their own personality during a large part of these two seasons and put together a solid team that always wanted to be the protagonist and was united until the final.
Javier Recio, who arrived in Murcia this Thursday, decided together with the board of directors that the player from La Mancha will not continue on the red bench
“I have no words to describe everything I have felt in these two seasons, but I think it is time to step aside and with great regret at the time of doing so,” said the Manchego on Twitter, hinting that his departure it is consensual. However, he will have a privileged place in the history of a club in which being a coach is a risky profession and in which surviving two years is a success.
From Sampere to Iñaki Alonso
The first to achieve what Simón had achieved was Emilio Sampere from Barcelona, who died in 1966, who led the Grana team for three consecutive seasons. He first did it in Third, in the 1928-29 academic year, where he was promoted to Second. Later he signed two more complete campaigns in the second echelon of Spanish football, until 1930.
To find the next coach to direct two courses in a row at Murcia, you would have to wait fourteen years. It was Antonio Bonet from Castellón, who also led Murcia to First Division. A player for Real Madrid and Granada, Bonet had his first great experience on the grana bench. He signed two complete campaigns, achieving promotion to the first category of Spanish football in 1943-44. In addition, in the following course he kept Murcia in the elite, although at the end of the year he gave way to Manuel López Llamosas, better known as ‘Travieso’.
Until 1966, another tenant on the bench who was so long-lived did not arrive at Murcia. It was José María Martín, a Coruña native who had developed his career as a footballer at Deportivo, Barcelona, Atlético de Madrid and Valencia. Murcia was his second experience as a coach after going down to Third with Badajoz, although in La Condomina he had two more than acceptable seasons in Second that allowed him to reach Deportivo to direct it in First.
Sampere, Mesones or Eusebio Ríos are among the privileged few who started a third year on an electric bench
It was almost a decade before the Argentinian Felipe Mesones, one of the most important technicians in grana history, arrived in Murcia. The man from Buenos Aires, who died in 2017, led Real Murcia in three different stages, the first being the most brilliant and in which he was promoted to the First Division (1972-73) and remained in the elite (1973-74). He also started the 1974-75 season, but after ten games he was replaced by Puskás, a world soccer legend who also did not materialize on the always unstable bench of La Condomina. Mesones returned to the grana club at the end of the eighties and also in 1996, but he could not lead Real Murcia to the First Division again.
Like Mesones, Eusebio Ríos also became a legend of the grana club for his matches and in the category that he did. And it is that the coach of Portugalete arrived at Murcia with the 1981-82 campaign in the Second Division already started, although it was in the 1982-83 financial year when he achieved promotion to the First Division, a category in which he kept Murcia with brilliance. But he did not complete his fourth season at a club where he left great memories.
The case of Iñaki Alonso, the last one who managed to remain in office for two full seasons, is similar to that of Simón: the man from Durango arrived at Murcia in Second B and returned him to professional football in just one year, and although he kept Murcia in Second , what was achieved was not enough for him to continue as grana for one more season. Other technicians who completed two seasons, such as José Griera, who achieved the first promotion to the First Division in 1940, although he did not do so consecutively.
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