2007-2008 Season

Muñiz, as head coach and sports director, planned a great team at ‘zero’ cost that completed an exceptional season, which culminated in promotion to the First Division. From the preseason stage at Antequera there were good sensations emanating from this great group of people, ‘a family’, as defined by one of the most notable and, at the same time, unknown new players, Brazilian central defender Weligton, who integrated perfectly with the rest of the new players (Gaitán, Hélder, Rossato, Cheli, Paulo Jorge, Apoño, Carpintero, Eliseu, Peragón, Baha and Erice who came in December, as well as youth team player Gerardo) with group of players who threw everything into the campaign to ensure staying up, as in the case of Goitia, Gámez, Calleja or the top goal scorer and heart of the team’s attack, Antonio Hidalgo, among others.Málaga started brilliantly with seven consecutive victories at the beginning of the newly christened BBVA League – nine games, if the first two in the King’s Cup against Celta and Tenerife are counted, a competition that has brought bad luck to the team over the years – and ended with the heroic achievement of staying in a promotion place for each and every one of the 42 games of the competition, after a bitter struggle with Numancia, Sporting, and Real Sociedad who was out of the running for promotion to First Division.It was a promotion based on hard work, a great team, a loyal fan base and Media that was behind a team destined to return to its natural position, that of Spain’s football elite. The road wasn’t easy at a sporting level, especially in a tight second half that ended with the final game in an agonizing photo finish. It was a hot Sunday, 15th June 2008. The ‘double’ from Hidalgo against his former team, C.D. Tenerife, sealed promotion in La Rosaleda for a Málaga that had added 72 points and ended as runner-up in the championship, behind only Numancia.

Ecstasy for the blue and whites with celebration to the roof tops in a Málaga that that returned to First under the slogan ‘Together We Can’. And they did. With Fernando Sanz and Muñiz, key factors in designing a very modest project, with humility, hard work and ‘common sense’. Once achieving the objective, the head coach from Gijón announced that he was leaving to go to Racing Santander, although it wasn’t long before he returned ‘home’, now in First (09/10).

Antonio Hidalgo, with 14 goals, was the top scorer in the team followed by Nabil Baja with 10 goals.