Real Madrid will play their first game in the 2023–24 Copa del Rey against a team from a lower league when they go to Arandina on Saturday, January 6, in the Round of 32.
The big teams in La Liga will be hoping for an easier first game than the ones they played on their way to winning the league title last year.
In that game, Madrid needed a goal from Rodrygo in the 69th minute to beаt Cacereno, a fourth-tier team from the west of Spain.
The Sporting News looks at Arandina’s past as the club gets ready for the most important game in its history.
Who is Arandina CF?
Based in the city of Aranda de Duero in the east of the country, Arandina plays in the Segunda Federacion, which is also known as Segunda B and is the fourth tier of the Spanish football pyramid.
They were promoted as champions of Group 8 of the fifth tier in 2022/23 and currently play in Group 1 of their new tier, in which teams are required to have a minimum of 10 players under full-time contracts.
As the names suggest, the Primera Federacion is the tier immediately above Segunda Federacion, with the Segunda Division (or La Liga 2) the next division up before La Liga itself, which Madrid has won 35 times.
After winning 19 and drawing 11 of their 30 league games last season, Arandina has found life tougher a step up. Before playing Madrid, they were bottom of the table by a point after 16 matches with a record of two wins, four draws, and 10 defeats.
“We started well and then the results did not come,” club captain Carlos Alonso told AS this week. “You have the pressure to get away from the bottom.
“The cup is, as I tell my teammates, a game that you have to enjoy. You play more relaxed against a superior team that has more to lose than you.”
Arandina club history
Based in the Ribera del Duero region of the Burgos province, the origins of Arandina’s somewhat chameleonic history are said to date back to football-playing students in 1918.
The Aranda Sports Club was formed two years later. Players initially sported a black and white shirt and blue shorts, but that changed to their current blue and white primary colors in 1928.
Five new versions of the club started up between 1923 and 1933, only one of which lasted longer than two years.
According to La Futbolteca, the availability of a “magnificent sports field”, which it says was inaugurated with a game partly made up of Madrid players in 1946, contributed to the creation of Gimnastica Arandina in 1948.
Gymnastics entered the third tier for the 1956/57 season but suffered financial problems after being relegated from Segunda B in 1981.
Those issues caused the club to withdrаw from the league after 10 games in 1986/87, and the club was dissolved soon afterward, having opted not to start again in a regional league the following season.
The current version of the club was founded in 1987 and has a crest including blue and white stripes, a crown, and flowers.
Arandina is recorded as playing in a regional league in 1997/98 and has played above that level for much of the time since then, tending to participate in the Tercera Division from which they have just been promoted. They spent two seasons in their current tier from 2015 to 2017 and a single campaign there in 2011/12.
Arandina stadium
The match against Real Madrid will take place at Estadio El Montecillo, a multi-use stadium in Aranda de Duero with a capacity of 5,000, according to Arandina’s website.
The club says the only recognized full house for the ground, which was opened in 1977, was for a successful first leg of a playoff match to reach Segunda B in June 2011. Another sell-out is surely in store on Saturday.