Deportivo promoted after season in second division
MADRID Sat May 31, 2014 8:17pm BST
(Reuters) - Deportivo La Coruna will return to La Liga next season after a 1-0 win at home to second-division rivals Jaen on Saturday secured at least second place behind already-promoted Eibar.
With one match remaining, Deportivo have 69 points, one behind Eibar, and make an immediate return to Spain's top flight after they were relegated in the 2012-13 campaign for the second time in three seasons.
Based in the north-western region of Galicia, Depor are a shadow of the team that blazed a trail in Europe in the first few years of the century and are one of many Spanish clubs to have suffered severe financial difficulties.
They won La Liga in 2000 and regularly played in European competition in the early part of the last decade, reaching the Champions League semi-finals in 2004 where they lost to eventual winners Porto 1-0 on aggregate.
At the other end of the second-division table, Alicante-based Hercules were relegated to the third tier of Spanish football despite Saturday's 1-0 win at Mirandes.
(Reporting by Iain Rogers, editing by Toby Davis)
