How the Super Dépor Era Began — Arsenio Iglesias and the Class of 1991
November 11, 2026 · Mark
Every version of the Super Dépor story starts somewhere different, the Bebeto signing, the 1994 near-miss, the title of 2000. The honest starting point is less glamorous: a Segunda side in the late 1980s, a city that had spent most of two decades outside the top flight, and a coach from Arteixo who had already lived several footballing lives.
Arsenio Iglesias was not an outsider’s choice. He had played for the club in the 1950s and managed it in stints across the decades before taking the bench again in 1988. What he built between then and 1991 is the foundation everything else stands on: promotion back to Primera in the spring of 1991, ending an absence that had defined a generation of supporters in A Coruña.
From survival to signings
The club that came up was not yet the club that would frighten Milan. The first Primera season was about staying there. What changed the trajectory was recruitment nobody outside Galicia saw coming: Brazilians of genuine class, Bebeto and Mauro Silva arrived in 1992, layered onto a local core led by Fran, the captain who would come to embody the whole project.
The results escalated quickly. By 1992–93 Dépor were challenging at the top of the table, and the phrase Super Dépor had crossed from terrace irony into national usage. A club whose ambition had been survival was suddenly setting the pace of the league, and the rest of the decade, through triumph and one famous heartbreak, followed from those three years of construction.
Arsenio’s share
Later coaches took the trophies: the Copa in 1995 under him, the league in 2000 under Javier Irureta, the Bernabéu cup final of 2002. But the era’s architecture (the idea that Deportivo could recruit better, play better and think bigger than its size suggested) was Arsenio’s, and the supporters who called him o bruxo de Arteixo, the wizard of Arteixo, never needed convincing.
The fuller story of the era, season by season, is on the Super Dépor page. This series returns to its sharpest single moments over the coming months, starting with the penalty that decided a title.