Santander (EFE).- La Roja will return to Los Campos de Sport in El Sardinero on September 11 to play a qualifying match for the European Championship against Cyprus.
La Roja will thus return to Santander fifteen years after the friendly match that faced the United States in 2008 (1-0, goal by Xavi Hernández), the last before their debut in the Euro Cup in Austria and Vienna, which they would end up winning in the Hand of Luis Aragonés.
The president of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla, and the president of the Cantabrian Football Federation (FCF), José Ángel Peláez, announced this Thursday in statements after the meeting they held at the regional government headquarters.
In the absence of the approval of the Board of Directors of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, which will ratify it at its next meeting, the match will be played in Santander on the occasion of the centenary of the FCF and because the team was expected to go to Cantabria in the summer of 2020, but finally it was not done due to the pandemic.
It will be the seventh time that the men’s national team has played in Santander, the second in an official match after the one they faced in 2004 against Belgium, seeking a ticket to the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
In addition, five years ago, on August 31, 2018, the women’s team beat Finland (5-1) at El Sardinero in their 2019 World Cup qualifier, and it was their first visit to Cantabria.
The Red does not come alone…
Revilla has pointed out that the visit of the Spanish team is a “very good event for Cantabria”, since the match will be broadcast live on many television stations around the world and will mobilize “a significant” number of sports journalists in the region to cover the event. event.
The head of the Executive has thanked José Ángel Peláez for his “tensor” for Cantabria to host this La Roja match and also the support of the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, who called him personally last Monday to inform him of the news.
Peláez has announced that the presence of the team in the region will be surrounded by other events such as a match of legends in Torrelavega or the celebration of the first European Football Strategy Congress.
And he is confident that the match against Cyprus, in which Spain is at stake for qualifying for next year’s Euro Cup, will be “a complete success” and will once again fill the El Sardinero stadium, as every time the team has played in Cantabria.