SPAIN
How supporters of UD Salamanca rebuilt a football club from scratch
On a cold January evening in northwest Spain, fantasy threatened to become reality. For 15 surreal minutes, Barcelona – 27-time La Liga champions and fivetime conquerors of Europe – trailed Unionistas de Salamanca in the last 16 of the Copa del Rey. Against the club of Cruyff, Guardiola and Messi, hometown lad Alvaro Gomez slammed home an emphatic volley to send the 6,000- strong crowd into raptures.
The team from Spanish football’s third tier eventually lost 3-1, but the scalps they claimed during their cup run showed that another kind of football is possible. Unionistas is a club entirely owned by its fans, one of a growing number around Europe that are fighting for the soul of the game at a time when it has never been more threatened. How the club got to this point is nothing short of remarkable.
For 90 years, Salamanca – a World Heritage Site boasting one of Europe’s oldest universities – was represented by Union Deportiva Salamanca (UDS), a club that bounced between the second and third tiers and spent just 12 seasons in the top flight. In line with new legislation, an SAD (sociedad anónima depor tiva, a public limited sports company) was set up in 1990 to run the club as a business. SADs were introduced to improve financial management and transparency in clubs, but as a result it often ripped power away from fans. In 2013, thousands of loyal supporters were left with nothing when the club was liquidated after amassing debts of €23 million.
So, what do you do when a near century of history, tradition and friendship suddenly disappears? A group of bereaved supporters took matters into their own hands and formed a new club. As the “In Memoriam UDS 1923-2013” slogan on the club badge suggests, Unionistas is a “tribute” team: never to replace or pretend to be UDS, but to honour its memory. The club is entirely owned by its supporters and operates a onemember, one-vote system, meaning each of the near 4,900 paying members has an equal say in how the club is run and on matters including kit designs and charity initiatives.
Unlike La Liga’s four fan-owned clubs – Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletic Club Bilbao and Osasuna – it’s a level playing field. There’s no multi-million euro buyin needed to run for the presidency or to become a board member. Those roles are voluntary, with members voting in elections every three years. “All of us are part of one big family, we’ve never felt that some people are more important than the rest of us”, says Peter Murphy, a British club member who has lived
