Twenty seasons in the First Division crown the history of Hércules, a club founded in October 1922 that this year celebrates its centenary in one of the most complicated moments on a sporting level. The Rico Pérez team missed the possibility of promotion to the First RFEF a few days ago when they were defeated by Adarve, a modest Madrid neighborhood of Pilar, and next season they will return to the military in the fourth step of Spanish football. The one that has traditionally exercised, together with Elche, as the Alicante flag in this sport will become the sixth team in the province in the 2022-23 academic year, at least if you look at the step. Together with Elche, the only representative in the First Division, Alcoyano, Intercity, Eldense and La Nucía will be the other Alicante clubs that will fight in categories higher than that of the Herculaneum (all in the First RFEF).

A sharp drop that has nailed a hobby that this Sunday demonstrated through the streets of the city called by Unidad Herculana.

The goal of Hercules was this season for promotion to be able to sing the happy birthday of the centenary (next October 20) in the First RFEF, the bronze category of football. A goal frustrated by the Adarve despite the fact that the people from Alicante had the advantage of playing that playoff tie in their stadium. A new disappointment for a crowd that doesn't remember what it's like to celebrate a goal in the First Division since 2011. “At Hércules, for many years, there hasn't been a club culture. Enrique Ortiz, the person in charge, does not believe in values ​​such as the quarry, the commitment to the facilities or taking care of the fans. He is short-sighted, he has built a giant with feet of clay that every year has the sole objective of moving up in category, without taking care of those aspects, and in the end the Hercules has finished in this way, being surpassed by five teams from the province, "he explains. to this newspaper Enrique Tébar, president of the Herculanos Association, one of those who demonstrated this Sunday.

«The club has reached the current situation due to a host of circumstances, most of them due to poor sports management and institutional extension, because the institutional ends up influencing sports. This year there has been bad luck with the ball, with injuries and penalties, but we cannot be so short-sighted”, adds Tébar.

Hercules does not fly back after the collapse that began a decade ago and from a benchmark club in which it will go next season to be the sixth representative of the province in the football echelon. The three Alicante teams that played this year in the same category (Second RFEF) have ended up celebrating the promotion that Rico Pérez's team has once again eluded. Intercity did it directly, while La Nucía and Eldense made the jump this Saturday in the playoff. The three will join the next campaign in the First RFEF to Alcoyano.

“It fills us with sadness not because of the rise of other teams, which are where they are because of their sporting merits, but because the Hercules is not higher up. The rest of the teams are where they should be, it is us who, in my opinion, are at least two categories below where we should be. It seems like a humiliation to us, but not because of the other teams, obviously because of us, "laments Tébar in conversation with ABC.

After a frustrating decade, Hercules has been overtaken by Elche as the team from Alicante with the most seasons in the First Division. While the herculanos are still stuck at 20, the ilicitanos will complete 24 campaigns when the next season begins. «There is an added cost to all this, which are the lost generations. Those who could have been Herculeans and are not going to be because they have not known a different Hercules than the one of misery and hardship, "says Enrique Tébar. «It is admirable the number of young Herculaneums who, despite everything, are still there, but obviously other teams have beaten us. It is very sad to see that children from Alicante now become Elche instead of Hércules because it is their benchmark in the province as a leading club that plays against the greatest in Spanish football, ”adds the leader of the Herculanos Association.

But Hércules has also lost its hegemony in the city of Alicante, where Intercity, a team with only five years of life and the only one in Spain that is listed on the stock market, is now the one that appears in the highest category (First RFEF, third rung of Spanish football).

The poor sporting results and the disappointment of seeing the rise slip away have caused a sector of the fans to be fed up with the directive. This Sunday, a thousand Hércules fans, according to the organizers, demonstrated through the streets of Alicante to protest against the management of Enrique Ortiz, at the head of the club in the last two decades, and to request the departure of the businessman. In addition to the sports disappointments accumulated in recent years, the Herculaneum entity drags a debt close to ten million euros.

For Enrique Tébar, «the resurgence of Hércules must go hand in hand with the institutions, in the same way that it happened in Elche or Castellón, where the city councils sided with the fans. Something that does not happen here, where the City Council, at least the government team, has turned its back on the fans and has left us sold to our fate with the largest shareholder, who right now is more interested in his judicial future or in the future of its municipal concessions than in the Hércules».

But the director of the Herculanos Association, looking to the future, considers that the club's situation does not seem to have a good solution. “It seems that the institutions have no intention of fixing it, at least the government teams, and the fans do not have the capacity because they do not have the capital or the resources. Alicante's business fabric also shows no interest in entering Hércules because they know that everything that negotiating with Ortiz means is negative because they have experience, and not good experience, that Ortiz has achieved many professional and economic successes due to maneuvers of dubious credibility or dubious ethics in the business world.

Tébar is already looking ahead to next season and knows that it will not be easy for the fans to see five Alicante clubs playing in categories higher than that of Hércules, but he affirms that it will not be easy for Enrique Ortiz either for various reasons. "The situation will get worse for him because he will no longer have a centenary to cover up sports misery, he will no longer have the excuse of coming from a season of restructuring the categories, as has happened this year, and we will not have the added interest of a derby against Intercity because they have risen in category ». That is the longing for which Enrique Tébar and the Herculaneum fans continue to sigh, a centennial club in its lowest hours.