Amid all the talk of a possible Intercitiazo at the Estadio José Rico Pérez on Wednesday night, there were flashbacks to one of the greatest upsets in Copa del Rey history: El Alcornazo.
When Real Madrid or Barcelona are drawn against a team two (or three in the case of Intercity) divisions below them for the round of 32 in the Copa del Rey, they can usually rest easy. Barcelona may well have been guilty of doing that in Alicante. But all they had to do was rewind back to 2009, and they’d find current Copa champion Manuel Pellegrini in the hotseat for Los Blancos finding out just what a humiliating cup upset can feel like.
One defeat from eight games left Real Madrid second in LaLiga, but a 3-2 defeat to Milan in the Champions League and the strength of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona meant that the Chilean wanted to put out a strong side to face Alcorcón in the Copa del Rey to see out the 1-0 lead from the first leg at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. Little did he know on October 27, 2009, that the date would go down in history as ‘Alcorconazo’.
Real Madrid lined up with Karim Benzema, Raúl, Rafael van der Vaart and Guti among others. Their squad’s total annual salaries summed up to €110 million. On the other side of the 3,000-seater Estadio Santo Domingo were an Alcorcón team with an annual salary below €1 million full of players who had been discarded by La Fábrica at Real Madrid’s youth system.
Despite that, they had hope. “That season, Alcorcón was a team that was playing great, that was leading the division, so when Real Madrid came we thought we could hurt them,” Alcorcón supporter Álvaro Moreno told La Liga Lowdown as he looked back on the tie. Even so, what would happen was beyond even his wildest dreams. “It even crossed our minds that, playing like this, we were sure to beat them,” he continued. “But we didn’t think we were going to win 4-0.” That’s exactly what happened.
27-year-old forward Borja had only scored 10 goals in his career but was up to six for the season going into the tie and stunned Jerzy Dudek in the Real Madrid goal on 16 minutes. He’d already tried his luck with a chip from distance in the opening stages, but second time around he curled the ball at an angle and beat the Pole in goal.
The Santo Domingo erupted, unaware that Borja’s movement in the box only six minutes later would force Spanish international Álvaro Arbeloa to turn the ball into his own net. Alcorcón weren’t just leading. They were comfortable.
Real Madrid upped the ante. And Alcorcón capitalised. They defended in numbers and hoofed the ball long to Diego Cascón and Borja to get on the end of. It was a connection that worked again six minutes before half-time, with Cascón breaking down the right and cutting back to midfielder Ernesto to make it three.
No-one expected it to last. Only days earlier, a Milan side including Andrea Pirlo, Ronaldinho, Clarence Seedorf and Alessandro Nesta had struggled to cling onto a three-goal lead against the imperious force of Real Madrid. “That game was a party, although I started the second half a little scared as Madrid were a great team, so we expected some sort of reaction after the break,” Alcorcón fan Álvaro admitted.
Instead, Alcorcón came out solidly. “We dominated the second half, and with the fourth goal madness broke out, with the entire crowd clapping and singing,” Álvaro remembers. It was Borja again as a ping-pong in the box fell to the centre-forward’s feet to prod home.
But this was only the beginning. Alcorcón had only beat Real Madrid Castilla, the club’s B team who were in the same division in one of their last six meetings, and they would now have to go to the Bernabéu and see out their lead. Unlike Intercity’s hopes in a one-legged tie, this was in the age of two-legged match-ups at every stage of the Copa del Rey. The side from the Madrid suburbs defended their first-leg lead successfully by only conceding an 81st minute goal to Van der Vaart to progress to the next round.
Racing Santander would knock them out, narrowly with a single-goal advantage in a 3-2 win, in the next round, but Alcorcón would be spurred on to win promotion to Seugnda. “It was a boost of energy,” Álvaro reflected. “The team believed they had the right to everything, and it allowed us to win promotion that year. You couldn’t ask for more.”
The legacy of El Alcorconazo would live on, with ‘27109’, the date of the game, being one of the most sought-after ticket numbers for the famous Spanish Christmas lottery that year. To this day, it remains one of the most famous Copa del Rey upsets of all time.