Guayas football is in danger of losing one of Ecuador’s two giants in the first division, the co-star of the country’s football classic, the team that is Ecuador’s second biggest title winner. Club Sport Emelec sank in the accumulated table – the one that adds up the points of the first and second stages of the Pro League tournament – which will determine the relegation to Serie B, in the case of the teams that finish in the penultimate and last field.

Emelec and another terrible record: five months without a win at the Capwell Stadium, for the Pro League

Today, when 19 days of the tournament have passed (15 correspond to the initial stage, and four are ongoing rounds), the Electricians are third from last, with only 17 units from 57 played (29.82% efficiency). With a goal difference of minus three, this is exactly the section that keeps Emelec ahead of Libertad FC (17 and minus eight) and Guayaquil City (17 and minus fourteen).

‘José Pileggi is terrifying. He made Emelec, with a script for a horror movie, part of the equipment that hijacked mediocrity and quemeimportismo,’ says the millionaire ex-manager

The outlook is not encouraging. Although there are eleven games ahead of us with 33 points in the game for salvation, Emelec has beaten only one of the upcoming opponents in the season so far. In front of the others, he lost and equalized on the same number of occasions: five times.

‘Emelec has hit rock bottom, its directors made bad decisions. I don’t know how the coach intends to make him play so badly’: Carlos Torres Garcés, the former blue coach and his harsh criticism

Despite the differences

A serious million-dollar moment makes the 2023 season comparable to the fateful one of 1980, when even as the current monarch of 1979, Emelec experienced a sporting tragedy when relegating to Serie B. This happened during the then-called Finalization Stage (now the second stage), before in the league

However, although the improvement of Emelec’s fortunes is in the hands of its board of directors (headed by a rookie president), coaching staff (headed by Colombian Hernán Torres, who has not improved anything), and players (the team’s performance is very poor, with two or three exceptions in in that case), for various reasons the trouble in 2023 is more dire than that in 1980 (among other things due to blues performances on 9 dates of the two aforementioned competitions).

The format of the tournament in 1980 is different from the one in 2023. In addition, 16 teams are now playing, and in the year of the fall of the millionaires there were only ten. Two representatives were promoted and relegated in the middle of the season and at the end of the season (at the end of each stage). And each win was awarded two units, compared to the three mandated by FIFA in 1994.

complications

Despite the above, it is the best number of games that could affect Emelec’s hopes of salvation. His highest number this year will be 30 in the Pro League. 1980. he played 18 in the first phase and another 18 in the second. With fewer commitments, the margin for error is reduced. There is less opportunity to make mistakes and also to recover. And Emelec does not work.

For this reason, the 2023 campaign at this point in the championship can be considered more dangerous than the 1980 one for the shipyard as a whole, despite the fact that it finally reached B 43 years ago. These are ten factors that support this hypothesis.