Orihuela CF - History

History

On 4 August 1993, the chairman of Orihuela Juventud y Deportes, Pedro Albarracín, received a notification from the Valencian Community Football Federation), allowing him to change the name of the club to Orihuela Club de Fútbol. A few months before, when the youth team of Atlético Orihuela was promoted to Liga Nacional Juvenil de Fútbol, the presidents of both clubs, Albarracín and Francisco González Polín, agreed on a merge, which created Orihuela Club de Fútbol.

The first club home kit was orange shirts and white shorts, as former Orihuela Juventud y Deportes, because the historical Orihuela Deportiva (founded in 1944) were still competing. Once the latter disappeared in 1994, Orihuela CF adopted their colours (yellow and blue) and became the most important local team.

From 1993–96, the club played in Primera Regional, obtaining promotion to Regional Preferente at the end of the third season. At the end of the 1996–97 season, new chairman Ángel Fenoll "acquired" the place of Club Deportivo Los Garres at Tercera División – Grupo 13 and Orihuela CF began their new era in Spanish national football.

It was with Paco Gómez as club owner that the side reached Segunda División B for the first time in their history in 2002–03, after being defeated several times in the play-offs. However, a very bad season ended with the team back in the fourth level.

In 2003–04 things didn't change for the better, as Gómez became owner of FC Cartagena and focused his efforts on his new team, although he was still Orihuela's chairman. A year later, José Rodríguez Murcia acquired the club and after two seasons in charge the team were promoted again to Segunda B. However, under Rodríguez's management, Orihuela soon underwent financial problems because of their excessive expenses and, at the beginning of 2008–09, Antonio Pedrera, one of the co-owners by that time, took charge of the club and became the new chairman.

Orihuela CF managed to stay up after a great comeback during the second half of the season. Luis Tevenet, who had begun the season as a player, became the new manager at the end of 2008 and was one of the keys to Orihuela's recovery. However, his good work did not assure his job since new owners took control of the team for the 2009–10 season and they brought a new manager and new players.

Fernando Presa was the head of the new board, but when he and the rest of his associates had to pay Orihuela's debt in order to avoid relegation to the fourth level, they left the club. With little time to spare, the former board took charge of the club again and paid the debt in the very last hour of the deadline. Orihuela CF stayed in Segunda División B and Francisco Rodríguez was named the new president.

These matters had very negative consequences for the team, as the new board had to cancel some of the high contracts that Presa had offered to some new players and bring new faces when the team should have been playing pre-season games. In spite of these setbacks, Orihuela had an excellent first half of the season that almost guaranteed their presence in Segunda B for another year. The board took advantage of this situation to release some of the best players such as Adrián Ripa, José Manuel Meca or Álex Colorado in order to reduce the wage budget.

Orihuela struggled nearly the rest of the season, but a final recovery left the team 7th. During this second part of the season, Nacho Cobaleda became the first ever elected president of the club, but he was replaced by the current chairman Antonio Felices months later.