Super Depor 2000: the title nobody in Spain saw coming

In August 2026 Deportivo de La Coruña return to the Spanish top flight after eight seasons away. It is a good moment to remember that this club, which two years ago was playing in the third tier, once won LaLiga. And that getting there took ninety-four years.

The Friday night at Riazor

19 May 2000, matchday 38, the last one. Deportivo hosted Espanyol at Riazor on 66 points, three clear of Barcelona and three clear of Zaragoza. A draw would have done. They won 2-0 through Donato early on and Roy Makaay before half-time, in front of about 35,000.

The final table read: Deportivo 69 points, Barcelona 64, Valencia 64, Zaragoza 63, Real Madrid 62. Five points clear of second. This was not a photo finish: it was a full season of superiority, twenty-one wins from thirty-eight.

The club had been formally founded on 2 March 1906. That May evening it became the ninth different team ever to win LaLiga.

How that side was built

The manager was Javier Irureta, in the job since 1998. The team had a spine that was recognisable on any ground in Spain:

• Jacques Songo'o in goal, with Manuel Pablo, Naybet, César and Enrique Romero in front of him.
• Mauro Silva holding midfield, alongside Donato, Flávio Conceição and a young Lionel Scaloni.
• Fran and Djalminha to invent things, the two players who defined the house style.
• And up front Roy Makaay, Pauleta and Turu Flores.

Makaay had arrived from Tenerife in July 1999 for around 1,350 million pesetas, a little over eight million euros. He made his debut on 22 August with a hat-trick in a 4-1 win over Alavés on the opening day. He finished the season with 22 league goals in 36 games and 26 in all competitions, though he was not the league's top scorer: that went to Racing's Salva Ballesta with 27.

One figure explains how uneven the competition was. The following season, 2000/01, Deportivo approved a budget of 9,944 million pesetas, around sixty million euros. The Real Madrid budget Florentino Pérez presented that same autumn was 33,250 million, close to two hundred million. More than three times larger.

The penalty that hung there for six years

To understand what 2000 meant you have to go back to 1994. On 14 May that year, also on the final matchday and also at Riazor, Arsenio Iglesias's Deportivo hosted Valencia a point ahead of Barcelona. One goal would have won them the title.

In the 89th minute referee López Nieto awarded Deportivo a penalty. Miroslav Djukic took it and goalkeeper José Luis González saved it. The match finished 0-0, Barcelona won at the Camp Nou and both ended on 56 points. The title went to Barcelona on the tiebreakers.

That season had another footnote almost nobody remembers and which belongs here: goalkeeper Paco Liaño conceded eighteen goals in thirty-eight matches, playing every minute of all of them. An average of 0.47 a game that remains the LaLiga record, equalled by Oblak in 2015/16.

The club's first major trophy came the following year, and it also had a strange ending. The 1995 Copa del Rey final against Valencia, at the Bernabéu, was suspended in the 79th minute at 1-1 by torrential rain and hail. It resumed three days later, on 27 June, and Alfredo made it 2-1 in the 81st.

EuroDépor

The 2000 title opened the best decade in the club's history. Five consecutive Champions League campaigns, from 2000/01 to 2004/05. Another Copa del Rey in 2002, the so-called Centenariazo: 2-1 against Real Madrid at the Bernabéu, on 6 March, the very night their hosts were celebrating their centenary. And three Spanish Super Cups.

And one night that still gets studied. Champions League quarter-final, 2003/04: Deportivo had lost 4-1 at San Siro to holders Milan. On 7 April 2004, at Riazor and in front of 29,000, they won 4-0. Pandiani on 5, Valerón on 35, Luque on 44 and Fran on 76. They were the first team in Champions League history to overturn a three-goal first-leg deficit. They went out in the semi-finals to Porto, who went on to win it.

"A club from a city of 250,000 people won the league, knocked out Milan and spent five straight seasons in the Champions League."

The fall and the way back

What followed was a long collapse. Relegations in 2011, in 2013 and in 2018. Then one more in 2020, down to the third tier, which left Deportivo four consecutive seasons outside professional football's top two divisions. Running alongside it, an insolvency process opened in 2013 with debts above 160 million euros and a repayment schedule that ran to 2048.

Both were resolved in the same year. The debt was cleared early with backing from Abanca and the court closed the process in September 2024 with the club at zero. And on 12 May 2024 Deportivo had returned to professional football by beating Barça Atlètic 1-0 at Riazor, through a Lucas Pérez free-kick.

Promotion to the top flight came on 24 May 2026, on the second-to-last matchday, with a 0-2 win at Valladolid in heavy rain and both goals scored by Bil Nsongo, a Cameroonian striker who had come through the reserves that same season. They went up as runners-up on 77 points, behind Racing de Santander, in the club's 120th anniversary season and with Antonio Hidalgo in charge.

• Simulate all 38 LaLiga matchdays and build your own final table.
• See where Deportivo would finish on their return to the top flight.
• Change any result and watch Europe and relegation shift around.
• Use the supercomputer to see each club's title probability.

"Open the LaLiga simulator and go find the next unlikely champion."