On 30 August 2009, away to Mallorca, Alejandro Bergantiños García played his first match in La Liga: he came on for the final half hour of a 2-0 defeat for Xerez, the club that had given him his first taste of the top flight. A midfielder born in A Coruña on 7 June 1985, he spent almost his entire career tied to RC Deportivo, whom he captained during his second spell there. He retired in June 2023.
He started out at Imperátor OAR, a youth club in his home city, where he stayed from 1993 to 2002. That year he joined Deportivo’s academy, and in 2004 he stepped up to the reserve side, Fabril. He spent four seasons there, until 2008, making 97 league appearances and scoring 10 goals. He was a hard-running holding midfielder, more concerned with winning the ball back and covering space than with getting into the box, and that profile earned him a move to gain experience in professional football.
Loans: Xerez, Granada and Gimnàstic
In 2008 Deportivo loaned him to Xerez, then in the Spanish second division. In 2008-09 he played 31 league games, 21 of them as a starter, and was part of the side that won the Segunda División in 2009 and earned the Andalusian club its first ever promotion to the top flight. He stayed at Xerez the following season, the one in which he made his La Liga debut, and played 26 matches, although the team went down in 2010. In the summer of 2010 he joined Granada on loan, but made only six league appearances and in January 2011 moved on to Gimnàstic de Tarragona, where he finished the season with 22 games and one goal.
Back at Deportivo and the La Liga years
In 2011 he returned to Deportivo, freshly relegated to the second tier. He played all 42 league games of the 2011-12 campaign, in which the team won the Segunda División in 2012 with 91 points, a record for the division, and went back up. In 2012-13 he had an unusual afternoon against Levante: after goalkeeper Dani Aranzubia was sent off, he went in goal for around half an hour and conceded once. His first league goal came on 20 October 2012, in a 5-4 home defeat to FC Barcelona at Riazor. Against the same opponent he scored two of his best-remembered goals: the 85th-minute equaliser in a 2-2 draw at Camp Nou on 12 December 2015, and the winner in a 2-1 victory at Riazor on 12 March 2017 over the reigning league champions.
Sporting Gijón and the captaincy
On 11 July 2017 Deportivo loaned him for a year to Sporting Gijón, in the second division. He made 36 league appearances and scored once in 2017-18. In 2018 he returned to A Coruña and took over as club captain. In 2018-19 he played 35 second-division games and scored one goal. He stayed on after the drop to Segunda División B in 2020 and played 21 matches at that level in 2020-21. Once the Primera Federación was created he added 33 appearances in 2021-22 and 20 in 2022-23, his final season.
Playing style and the Galicia team
Bergantiños was a defensive midfielder built on work rate and cover, with plenty of running and little presence in the opposition box, as his scoring record shows. His ability to fill different roles in midfield, and even in goal in an emergency, made him a regular option for his coaches in the top flight, the second tier and the third level. He was never capped by Spain, but he did play for Galicia: on 20 May 2016 he featured at Riazor in a friendly against Venezuela that ended 1-1.
Numbers and retirement
For Deportivo’s first team he made 318 league appearances and scored 9 goals, which places him among the ten players with the most games in the club’s history. Across all his spells, including the reserve side, he passed 500 league matches. His honours include two Segunda División titles, with Xerez in 2009 and with Deportivo in 2012. He announced his retirement in June 2023, after fifteen seasons in professional football.
