Eternal Sunday in Vallecas. The Madrid neighborhood experienced an emotional afternoon saying goodbye to Óscar Trejo. What happened this May 17 at the franjirrojo stadium was one of those things that football very rarely gives away. An entire parish surrendering to one of its own, without artifice. Just a stand, a rayista legend and ten years full of experiences that did not fit into any speech. Neither in that of ‘Chocota’ nor in the one that Iñigo Pérez would later give, another protagonist who wanted to be an extra on the day of the captain of Santa Inés.
The afternoon was building its emotion in layers. First the game, with assistance and corridor in the change. After the final whistle, the lap of honor. Trejo walked the pitch accompanied by his wife and children while the stands gave him back in the form of songs everything that he had given them in the form of football and loyalty. Martín Presa gave him a commemorative plaque: gate number eight of the stadium will bear his name. Trejo, true to himself, received it with humility: “I have told the president that I disagree, that there are many people here who deserve it as much as I do.”I would later say in a mixed zone.
The last ovation from Vallecas to Trejo
When he took the microphone, the stadium fell silent. “Thank you, not for today, but for these ten years that you have given me affection, love. You have accepted me as one more and in the end “I am 50% from Santiago and 50% from Vallecas”. He talked about his children, who were there, watching him from the grass. “Today I am for my children, who are the greatest treasure I have, along with my wife”. He told them what he always tells them: that in the sport or life they choose, the main thing is to be a good person, demonstrate transparency, loyalty and competitiveness. And that stand deserved it.
He asked his people to never change, to accompany the Palazón, the Valentín, the Batalla, the Álvaro García. That the love and passion they put into it is something unforgettable. “I love you very much. I’m going to miss you a lot. And well, here are six subscriptions that will always be present in that corner”.
Trejo and his family next to the plaque.
Then he spoke Inigo Perezwith his future still up in the air, who chose to erase himself from the shot from the first sentence. He asked that any applause that might be due him be given to Trejo. And, then, he went to the heart of the matter: “Today I told you something that I understood the first year when I came with Andoni: that the important thing in this stadium It’s not the what, it’s not the result, it’s the how.. These players are the best in the world. ‘Choco’, in the how, there is no one like you“In the end he turned his speech towards the stands and told them that they need them, that without them they cannot do it. “Now that ‘Choco’ is not going to be there and everything is going to be heavier, never abandon us”.
The closing was written by the Rayista fund itself. Trejo merged with the Bukaneros stands and sang ‘The Pirate Life’ with his peopleraised among them, as one more, which is exactly what he has always been. One last time. For one day the entire neighborhood forgot that there was a Conference League final just over a week away. There was just a man saying goodbye to the place where he grew up, and a neighborhood that didn’t want him to leave. “I am 50% Santiago and 50% Vallecas,” he had said. And Vallecas, this afternoon, returned 100%.
