Between them, Jose Bordalas and Manuel Pellegrini have been coaching for 63 years at 26 clubs across 31 spells, and taken charge of 2,447 games — but never this one. Very different roads, and very different methods too, have brought them to the same place. The Magic Island, they call it. And while most days that’s a laugh, on Saturday it will feel that way: The match that’s supposed to be the most significant in any Spanish season, handed a weekend of its own, really will be.
For Valencia and Real Betis — two huge clubs, the fifth and fourth biggest in the country, respectively, when it comes to fandom, according to estimated government statistics — the Copa del Rey final (Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET, stream live on ESPN+) is not just the biggest game of their current seasons, it is the biggest game for many seasons. For their managers, it could even be the most significant single match they have ever taken charge of. Neither Pellegrini nor Bordalas, men whose coaching careers go back further than anyone in LaLiga’s, who have not just achieved but overachieved just about everywhere, have won a major trophy here.
They have never been in a Copa del Rey final before.
And now here they are, three decades after setting out, via very different routes and with very different ideas, firm in their convictions and characters. There is much that is shared, but this final is a clash of styles too, a neat illustration that there is not always a right way, but many ways. And in the end, only one winner.
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“I remember that first day as if it was yesterday,” said David Bauza, one of Bordalas’s players when he made his managerial debut, in the sports daily AS. “From the first day, he said what mattered was: win, win, win and win.”
He did, often. That was 1993, and it would take Bordalas 19 years to leave Spain’s east coast and the Comunidad Valenciana — he…
Source : espn
