1.2. CD Tenerife – A History

🎵 Suggested tune: “Mas Que Nada” – Tamba Trio 🎵

Founded in 1922, Tenerife are a professional Spanish football club playing in the Spanish Segunda Division. Nicknamed “Los Chicharreros”, the club play their home games at Estadio Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez (Capacity: 22,824), named after their former club president who instigated the reconstruction of the stadium between 1946 and 1950.

Success and trophies have been few and far between at CD Tenerife, with the club enjoying it’s best spell of success during the 1990s where they enjoyed 10 successive seasons in the top tier of Spanish football before being relegated in the 1998/1999 season. Despite a brief return to La Liga in the 2000/2001 season (with promotion masterminded by one Rafael Benitez), the club has languished in the lower levels of Spanish football since, relegated to the third tier of Spanish football in 2011 before returning to the Segunda Division in 2013 where they currently remain in 2019 having finished in 11th place in the 2017/2018 season.

Notable Personnel

In addition to Rafa Benitez, CD Tenerife have made a number of high profile managerial appointments over the past 30 years (almost as high profile as their latest managerial appointment, @MaddFM986) – most notably througout the 1990’s where they were led by familiar names such as Jupp Heynckes (whose credits include Bayern, R. Madrid, Benfica), Javier Clemente (formerly of Bilbao, Marseille, A. Madrid and Spain), Pepe Mel (Premier League fans will remember his unsuccessful stint at West Brom in 2014) and more recently Joseba Exteberia of Bilbao legendary status who won over 50 caps for Spain from 1997 to 2004.

Heynckes, Clemente, Mel

Success throughout the 1990s also meant that the islanders were able to attract a lot of talented young players, who later went on to become big names in the game both at club and international level. Arguably one of the most successful and prolific strikers in the club’s history was Juan Antonio Pizzi, who scored 76 goals in 143 games for the club, helping them achieve UEFA Cup qualification in 1995 and finishing as La Liga Top Scorer with 31 goals to his name. This form led him to a high profile transfer to Barcelona where he spent two seasons, as well as earning 22 caps for Spain and scoring 8 goals. Pizzi has since gone on to manage a number of club and international teams, most recently leading Saudi Arabia to the World Cup finals in Russia 2018.

Other notable strikers to have graced the Estadio Heliodoro Rodríguez López turf include well known Bosnia International Meho Kodro (transferred from Barcelona in 1996 after being signed by then manager Johan Cruyff) and German World Cup runner-up in 2002 Oliver Neuville, however neither of these were able to reach the same levels of prolificacy as Pizzi, and it wasn’t until the arrival of Roy Makaay that CD Tenerife had found themselves a more powerful goal scorer.

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One cannot discuss notable former Tenerife players without mentioning arguably one of the best centre midfielders of the 1990s – Argentinian defensive midfielder Fernando Redondo, who played over 100 games for the club before moving on to shine for European giants Real Madrid and A.C. Milan. An elegant deep-lying playmaker who played in front of the defence, Redondo’s main attributes were his creative passing, vision, technique and close control with his left foot, as well as his ability to control the tempo of his team’s play in midfield which led to him signing for Real Madrid for a fee of £3.15m in 1994. Redondo was replaced at Tenerife by another well known centre midfielder – Slavisa Jokanovic, who before his recent managerial spells at Watford and Fulham in the Premier League played over 120 games for CD Tenerife as well as winning 64 caps for the former republic of Yugoslavia. He later left for Deportivo La Coruna and was replaced by another familiar face for Premier League fans – Brazilian midfielder Emerson who joined Tenerife after a successful spell at Middlesbrough where he played alongside the likes of Juninho and Fabrizio Ravanelli.

Finally – a more recent familiar face to have come through the ranks at CD Tenerife (and another reason for me to have a more personal affiliation to the club as a Newcastle United fan) is Ayoze Perez, who started his career with Los Chicharerros in 2011 before moving to Newcastle in 2014 for an extremely reasonable sum of £3 million. Perez has been an ever present figure throughout the recent turbulent years of the Mike Ashley era (don’t even get me started), and to date he has made over 150 appearances for the Magpies scoring 33 goals.

It is clear from all of the above that despite a lack of trophies and glory for many years, the club is steeped in both history and potential – glimpses of which have been displayed by previous managers and players alike however the goal of this save is to top all previous achievements and bring CD Tenerife to the top of Spanish and European football; starting by rebuilding the current team and staff in order to obtain promotion to La Liga and from there, world domination for “Los Chicharreros”.

Hop over to the next post to see our first thoughts and reactions to the Tenerife squad and club set up as well as goals and objectives for this save.

Hope you enjoyed the above, much more to come seeing as we haven’t even started the save yet! Feedback is welcome as are any likes, shares, retweets etc – you can also subscribe on the side/bottom of this page to get new post updates. Yours lovingly, MaddFM.