Friday, May 18th, 2012
We continue our look towards the new season by focusing on another of La Liga’s new boys, Rayo Vallecano. Raül Pope Fargüell has been a season ticket holder at the Madrid club for several years now and he gives us the low down on their chances for the coming campaign.
Week One of the new season will see Mallorca visit the Teresa Rivero stadium in what will be Rayo’s fourteenth season in Spain’s top division in their history. They got there under the tutelage of José Ramón Sandoval trailing only to Real Betis, the eventual Segunda División winners, in a title race that went to the wire. Not bad for a club that may be looked on as Madrid’s fourth team, but the reality is somewhat different. Getafe, in truth, have no fans, and given Rayo’s small-fry credentials everyone wants to see them do well. This is not to say they are the best supported club in the city, only no-one wants them to lose, which cannot be said about their more illustrious neighbours.
The club is an enigma and is maybe hard to understand looking from the outside, but very easy to accept once you’re in. The club is unashamedly left-wing, that is to say, the fans are left-wing and Vallecas, the neighbourhood from which the club gets its name, is famous in Madrid and beyond for its hippy atmosphere and marijuana-tinged air. This club though has had rotten luck with owners and it might be this mish-mash of values that endears the club to people generally. Since 1991 the club has been under control of Pedro Ruiz-Mateos and from 1994 until this year, his wife, Teresa Rivero, after whom the stadium was renamed in January 2004. These two business moguls have twice gone bankrupt with their companies Rumasa and the imaginatively named Nuevo Rumasa leaving Rayo in a financial quagmire.
The last of those came last season and meant that the players went eleven months unpaid and Rayo B were unable to pay a referee for one of its games. The club’s ground staff were only able to get a month’s remuneration after five months without any because the players forfeited their wages and the locals in Vallecas held a community fundraiser to keep things ticking over. Mr and Mrs Ruiz-Mateos are famously Opus Dei, the far-right conservative religious group, known to have propped up Franco’s government during Spain’s five-decade long dictatorship supplying el caudillo with ministers for his cabinet. Pair this with the Che Guevara motifs around the ground, the Republican flags and anti-Nazi slogans and you wonder how it all works. But it does. Well, it did.
After Nuevo Rumasa turned out to be not so new, Teresa Rivero sold the club to Raúl Martín Presa, who spent his first six months as owner in meetings seemingly trying to off-load the club to the highest bidder. The build-up in the dressing room to Week One in la liga hasn’t been smooth either. New arrivals look lightweight; Pérea from Atlético; Michu from Celta Vigo and two other players no-one has ever heard of. Through the departure gates have gone those largely responsible for Rayo’s good form last season, namely Coke and Armenteros to Sevilla and Trejo to opening-day rivals Mallorca.
No other movements in the transfer market look like replacing what was the bedrock of Rayo’s promotion success, however all is not lost. The season before last Rayo Vallecano finished in eleventh place and were dismal. Pepe Mel, the coach that led Real Betis to finish ahead of Rayo last season, was sacked in February after being thrashed three-nil at home to Girona and losing to Pascal Cygan’s Cartagena. Rayo, for the neutral fan, had the consummate ability to entertain. There was a three and four-nil drubbing of Recreativo and Castellón, a three-two loss at home to Nàstic and a four- all and a three-three draw against Hércules and Real Sociedad. Rayo had a habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, or coming out in the second half determined to turn those three points into one. Pepe Mel paid for the team’s inconsistency.
Last season with so little expectation, José Ramón Sandoval has worked miracles. The erratic results were put to bed and maybe Celta’s inability to win two games on the trot made Rayo look better than they were. Vallecas will be a sell out every game next season and it’s intimidating to say the least. It’s not so much the noise at Vallecas, though the atmosphere when the place is jumping will make your hair stand on end, it’s more the unrelenting passion with which the home fans insult the opposition. Any player that takes a corner this season can expect a torrent of abuse that I imagine isn’t tolerated elsewhere. Sandoval, for all his inexperience has the fans behind him, who will expect only to enjoy the ride, has proved he can do things differently. What’s before him though is his biggest challenge, that most difficult of second seasons to keep Rayo afloat on and off the pitch.
To read more by Raül check out his personal blog The Consolation of Blogging. Tomorrow Michael Williams previews the third La Liga new boy, Granada CF.
Tags: Rayo Vallecano
Out of all the stadiums I’ve been to in Spain, Rayo’s is my favorite.
Maybe it’s because even before you emerge from the steps of the Metro you can see the wall of the stadium. It certainly reminds those of a true neighborhood or ‘barrio’ club.
Most importantly, the players whom I have known, met or talked to have all been friendly and accommodating. I’ll be pulling for them to do well this year, no doubt.