This is going to be a pet project of mine, and true to its name, it will start with an ending. That of Lluís Carreras career as a Real Zaragoza coach, to be precise.

Some context first, obviously. Going into the final round of the Spanish Segunda División, Real Zaragoza depended on themselves. The team only needed to achieve a draw to secure a place among the promotion playoff teams. The opponents? Already-relegated UE Llagostera. Piece of cake, right?

Long-time fans of Real Zaragoza will already know how it ends: it seems we’re a cynical lot.

Not even us saw this coming, though. A humiliating 6-2-defeat in which we barely stood a chance left tears on fans’ cheeks reddened by desperation anger and utterly annihilated hope. This wasn’t the ending we’d been waiting for all season.

I’m only writing this to make a few points.

1. The small margins of football. Last season, Popovic was 6 minutes from taking Zaragoza to Primera. Had Las Palmas not scored then, thing might have been very different. Maybe we would have called Popovic a hero. Las Palmas did score, though, and Popo was sacked halfway through this season, disliked by almost everyone.

Before tonight, there had been a number of Zaragocistas crying foul play over certain referee’s decisions. A penalty here or no hands here, and Zaragoza might have been in the playoffs now. We aren’t, though, and that’s the bottom line. Cruel as it might be.

2. Carreras honesty. The soon-to-be former manager of Zaragoza did not shy away from his responsibility. He clearly said that this was down to him and his decisions, that the fans deserved better than this, and that he would step down right away. A frankness that took at least me by surpriseIt might have been tempting to place at least some portion of the blame on some (or all) of the players, who had seemingly already gone on vacation, in mind if not body. He did not, and despite everything, deserves credit for at the very least that. He also wished the future coach of Zaragoza the best of luck, adding that “with a better coach [Zaragoza] would surely achieve promotion”. In the success- and results-focused world of football, such open honesty and self-criticism seem rare. No one dares admit they were wrong, for fear it be taken as a sign of weakness. It is anything but weakness, and, if anything, endears that man ever so slightly to me.

3. Start, or continue, a project. I’m not sure if there’s really a thought out process within Zaragoza at the moment, but loping in from the outside, there’s at least more of a project there than before. While some of the players are sure to leave for various reasons during the summer, I dearly hope that we might at least keep a backbone, a torso to which extremities can then be added. Continuity is rewarded in football (it is different from stagnation).