Great football clubs are best understood from the mosaic of small stories that make them up. Through human stories – of victories, defeats, anecdotes or feelings – a faithful and accurate image of the entity in question is created. A portrait full of brushstrokes that add layers and layers to explain the idiosyncrasy of the club. This complete and transversal view is usually found in the chronicles and reports of the journalists who follow them on a daily basis. There are also reporters who, beyond their professional work, have a special connection with the team. As if they understood it better. As if they knew something that the vast majority doesn’t. It is a mix of physical closeness and emotional empathy. Thus, when the fans read their texts, they feel reflected in thoughts and sensations. As if upon reading them they thought: this is exactly what I have experienced.
Something similar happens to the journalist Maite Martín, who has just published the book 100 stories of a Centennial Ray (Lectio Ediciones). Upon learning of the stories she has collected, followers of the centenary club – it celebrated its first century on May 29 – approach the author to share their own experiences. They do it because, in at least one of the hundred chapters in the book, they have felt identified. It was not easy to achieve it in a club as special as the Vallecano, whose connection with the stands goes far beyond the ball and which coexists in the same city with two clubs of enormous size and that have had a lot of weight in its history: the origin of the stripe that runs through the shirt or the economic salvation after the relegation to Third Division in 1961, for example. A book with the aroma of the neighborhood -Vallecas-; football at 12 in the morning, between mass and aperitif; of a background of the stadium that is a building; of the people who fuel the fans or the youth team and do not appear in the headlines; to help Carmen to avoid her eviction and that she, in turn, help the children of the mythical Wilfred travel to say goodbye to her father. The essence of Lightning, distilled in 100 chapters.
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