Where Are They Now: Deportivo Alavés

In look­ing back at the past win­ners and runners-up in both the Cham­pi­ons League and UEFA Cup, one story jumped out at me more than any other. In what was their great­est sea­son to date, Deportivo Alavés had a mag­i­cal run all the way to the 2001 UEFA Cup Final.

The 2000-01 UEFA Cup was a pure knock­out tour­na­ment with a sin­gle qual­i­fy­ing round and a first round that included 48 teams. The first round pro­duced few shock results with the excep­tion of Fiorentina being knocked out by Aus­trian club FC Wacker Inns­bruck. Alavés snuck by Turk­ish side Gaziantep­spor by a 4–3 aggre­gate while their even­tual oppo­nents in the final Liv­er­pool FC had to scrape a 1–0 aggre­gate win against Roman­ian club FC Rapid Bucuresti. Alavés defeated Rosen­borg BK of Nor­way and FC Inter­nazionale Milan in the fourth round to reach the quarter-final stage. Alavés were not alone in their upset run as smaller clubs Rayo Val­le­cano (Spain) and FC Kaiser­slautern (Ger­many) both made it to the quarter-final stage.

As fate would have it, Alavés were drawn against fel­low Spaniards Rayo Val­le­cano in the quarter-finals and knocked them out 4–2 thanks in large part to a 3–0 home win. In the semi-finals, Alavés then ham­mered Kaiser­slautern by an aggre­gate of 9–2. They were almost equally pro­lific in both legs win­ning 5–1 and 4–1 to advance to the finals.

The final took place at the West­falen­sta­dion in Dort­mund, Ger­many on May 16, 2001. What looked to be a mis­match on paper turned into one of the great­est games in the his­tory of the UEFA Cup com­pe­ti­tion. Liv­er­pool had a potent blend of youth (Steven Ger­rard, Michael Owen, Danny Mur­phy) and more expe­ri­enced play­ers (Rob­bie Fowler, Vladimir Smicer, Gary McAl­lis­ter, Markus Babbel). Pow­ered by play­ers like mid­fielder Jordi Crui­jff, son of the leg­end Johan Crui­jff, as well as right wing­back Cos­min Con­tra and striker Javi Moreno, Alavés were a very attack-minded side. Alavés came back from being down 2–0, 3–1 and 4–3 to level the match a fourth time in the 88th minute. The end­ing to this story was cruel as the game went to extra time and Liv­er­pool won 5–4 on the Golden Goal rule when Delfí Geli headed a Gary McAl­lis­ter free kick into his own goal.

High­lights of the match are avail­able via this YouTube video

The win pro­pelled Liv­er­pool to a unique cup tre­ble, as they also won the Eng­lish FA Cup and the Eng­lish Foot­ball League Cup that sea­son. The UEFA Cup win was also Liverpool’s first Euro­pean tro­phy since they won Euro­pean Cup (Cham­pi­ons League fore­run­ner) 17 years earlier.

Alavés has not reached such a height since that mem­o­rable day in May and cur­rently find them­selves in the Segunda Divi­sion (Span­ish Divi­sion Two — a step below La Liga). Alavés were rel­e­gated from the top flight after the 2003-04 sea­son, only to bounce back up a year later. In the 2005-06 sea­son, they were rel­e­gated back to the sec­ond level and have not returned since. They cur­rently sit 15th in the Segunda Divi­sion, 10 points back of lead­ers UD Salamanca.

One side-note of inter­est to North Amer­i­can read­ers, in 2007 Alavés oper­ated a team in the USL First Divi­sion in the United States called the Cal­i­for­nia Vic­tory. The team were based out of Kezar Sta­dium in San Fran­cisco and wore the Alavés col­ors. How­ever, when Alavés had a change in own­er­ship, the new bosses pulled sup­port for the club and the Vic­tory folded.

Tagged as: deportivo alaves, jordi cruijff, liverpool, uefa cup final, vladimir smicer