Searching for Shels in Spain
20 years after the most vertiginous game in Irish club football history, I went looking for signs of Shelbourne in Spain.
In this loudest of countries, all it took to silence a group of socialising Spaniards was a routine football trivia question.
Sitting around a table outside Matilde - a bar tucked into a corner of A Coruña - Diego, Sito, Jorge and a few other friends scratched heads and exchanged puzzled glances. For a team whose folkloric five-year European run attracted admirers from far beyond this northwest corner of Spain, nobody could tell me that the last goal Deportivo La Coruña scored in Champions League competition was against a team from Ireland.
A Coruña, it seemed, didn’t remember the tie that many Irish football fans have never forgotten. No game involving one of our club sides has since come close to matching the prestige of opponent and the pri…
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