Deportivo La Coruña is no more. The club is now Deportivo De A Coruña. The name change may not have pleased the nostalgic, even if it was approved by the fans, but it has been followed by a transfer window straight out of a FIFA 16 manager career. For plenty of fans, that alone has turned Depor into a cult team. There may have been no better way to mark a return to La Liga after eight years, especially after such a spectacular fall. Depor even dropped into the third tier, with the very real prospect of going lower still. Now, though, things are more or less back to normal.
The numbers are striking: €26 million spent on arrivals, just €500,000 recouped from sales. Galicia welcomed 37-year-old Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who has already scored three goals in his first three La Liga games; Adama Traoré, the attacking winger who a few years ago was considered one of the brightest players in the world in his position, and certainly the most muscular; José María Giménez, former pillar of Simeone’s Atlético Madrid and the Uruguay national team; and Roma full-back Angeliño, an excellent player coming off several difficult seasons disrupted by injuries.
If those names make the Depor sound like an instant team of old stars, or a squad assembled largely according to the reputations of the players involved, think again. The project is built around something else. Much of that €26 million has gone on players with a different profile, younger and more future-facing. Leo Román, for instance, is a 25-year-old goalkeeper signed from Mallorca for €9 million. Danish attacking midfielder Jonathan Asp Jensen, 20, arrived from Bayern Munich for €6 million. Then there is 19-year-old Polish defender Bright Ede, signed from Motor Lublin for another €6 million. And Depor also managed to bring in Marc Casadó, one of the purest talents to come through Barcelona’s La Masia, on loan. Antonio Hidalgo, the former Huesca coach, has an Italian midfielder in his squad too: Lorenzo Amatucci, signed from Fiorentina for €2.5 million after an excellent season at Las Palmas.
The new arrivals have been added to a strong core of homegrown players – they were central to the climb back through the divisions. For the return to La Liga, the club chose not to break that up. They turned down every offer for Yeremay Hernández, the brightest talent to emerge from the academy, who finished last season with ten goals and 11 assists. David Mella, another attacking winger, also came through the entire youth system at the Riazor club. Meanwhile, Deportivo has opened its new training centre, the Depor Training Center, a nearly €50 million project spread across 180,000 square metres. A major new facility was one of the priorities set by Juan Carlos Escotet, the finance magnate who has been at the club’s top since 2024 and has always said he wants to take Deportivo back to the elite of Spanish and European football. A new name, yes. The rest of the project is rather more familiar: a strong academy, a core of players who came through it, a few expensive bets on the future, and some names that would have looked much more at home on a FIFA transfer list a decade ago. For a club that has been through what Deportivo has been through, it is a pretty good way to come back.