Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to LiquidFootball. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Real Oviedo
Topic Started: Nov 14 2012, 05:33 PM (587 Views)
AntMcfc
Member Avatar
POTY
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Posted Image

SOS Real Oviedo – when Twitter does good

Social media can bring out some of the best and worst traits in people, especially when it comes to football.

People say things online that they wouldn't dream of saying to a person in real life, usually behind the perceived safety of a pseudonym. Message boards are packed with hatred and bile which go well beyond what most consider reasonable.

There's a flip side though, a big one which shows that not everyone is an angry keyboard warrior who hates the world and anyone who dares express an opinion different from theirs.

There will always be cranks about, but instant social media can show the genuine strength of opinion, it can bring like-minded people together and help lost causes. And at no time is this truer than when a football club is in financial trouble.

Take Real Oviedo, which has spent the last decade fighting for survival, lurching from crisis to crisis. The first thing most British and Irish people knew of Oviedo was when they signed the troubled footballer Stan Collymore in 2001.

The 6,000 fans, many brandishing Union Jacks, waiting to greet him didn't know it, but it was a last ditch attempt for the striker to save his career. Collymore was depressed, described the city as a "bit of a backwater" and compared it to Norwich. He lasted 34 days.

Collymore's head wasn't in a good place. He wrote that his Spanish team mates only spoke in - wait for it - Spanish, but English footballers don't always cover themselves in glory when they move abroad.

Ian Rush claims that he never made the oft-attributed quote that playing for Juventus with a home in Turin was "like living in a foreign country", but when John Aldridge joined Real Sociedad in 1991, he confessed than he'd never heard of San Sebastian, the beautiful city where he'd agreed to live.

Oviedo's latest crisis threatens their 86 year existence. They need €1.9 million before this Saturday to stave off liquidation. Their total debt, most of it in back taxes, is €12 million, a debt they service with annual payments of €2 million.

The Asturian club from Fernando Alonso's attractive home city of 225,000 may not be well known outside Spain, but they are 17th in the all-time Spanish league table ahead of clubs like Mallorca, Malaga and Villarreal. The team in which English Premier League stars Santi Cazorla, Juan Mata and Michu developed their talents now plays in the regional third tier alongside the reserve team of Sporting and Real Madrid's C team, which they met on Sunday.

Over 20,000, twice the average, attended in the beautiful 30,500 capacity Carlos Tartiere stadium, one of Spain's finest. It only opened in 2000, but saw just one season of Primera Liga action as the home club went down that season after 13 consecutive terms in the top flight, never to return since.

To get out of their crisis, a share issue (shares costs just over €10 each) was launched less than two weeks ago. The response has been phenomenal. Real Madrid bought €100,000 of shares and over €1 million has been raised so far. Michu (who was so loyal to Oviedo that he turned down a contract offer to play in the Primera Liga for the first time from bitter rivals Sporting Gijon in 2010), Mata and Cazorla have all bought shares, plus former striker Adrian who is thriving at Atletico Madrid.

But this has been a campaign led by social media and in particular by English journalist Sid Lowe.

The Londoner moved to Oviedo in 1996 (before moving on to Madrid) and fell for the club, a Guillem Balague in reverse. Balague is the Catalan who talks about Spanish football for English television and moved from Barcelona to Liverpool in the late 90s, becoming a Liverpool fan.

Lowe launched an online campaign which has seen fans from over 70 countries buy shares. Social media and the ease of buying through companies like Paypal make something possible which would have been difficult only a decade ago.

A regional story became an international one. From being given no chance of survival a week ago, Oviedo are on their way to surviving — at least for another year. It's the feel good story of the moment in a Spain which needs positive good stories, a country which will today (Wednesday) hold a national one day strike against the cuts, the deepening recession and the state of the economy.

Oviedo may get lucky. A football club is for life, yet they need an injection now. Some of the new shareholders may retain an interest in the club, others may move on to the next story.

Oviedo have been lucky too in having fans like Lowe to raise awareness and orchestrate a campaign. But what of the other clubs, not just in Spain, who have problems? There have been so many that their cause even attracts cynicism, with people saying: 'We've heard this before, they never go out of business.' Yet clubs do fold, clubs are still mismanaged and still live beyond their means. Fans don't always help either.

When a benefactor arrives on the scene, they ask few questions about where the money is coming from. Fit and proper people are often anything but. There were no flags in the Portsmouth end at the 2008 FA Cup final castigating their owners for living, well, well beyond the club's means. Fans want to live the dream, yet those fans have to pick up the pieces when things go wrong.

And it's all so ironic for there's never been as much money in football. Most of that money passes straight through the game and out as players' wages and astronomical transfer fees.

There'll be another club along soon, another campaign to raise funds. It might be in Asturias, at Betis or Coventry; same story, different characters and colours.

WANT TO HELP SAVE REAL OVIEDO? CLICK HERE TO DONATE!
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
AntMcfc
Member Avatar
POTY
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
I'm going to buy a share tonight just so I can say I'm a shareholder in a Spanish football club :D
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
AntMcfc
Member Avatar
POTY
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Very disappointed. I bought a share but I haven't even had an email from my club, no certificate etc, they just took my money and gave me a receipt for it. All I wanted was the certificate lol.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ManYou
Member Avatar
Thierry Henry
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Oviedo reminds me of these two guys.

Viktor Onopko

Posted Image

And the genius that was Robert Prosinecki.

Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
AntMcfc
Member Avatar
POTY
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
:cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: I HAVE SAVED MY CLUB

OVIEDO, Spain (AP) - Thanks to the generosity of its fans and an accounting error, indebted Spanish soccer club Real Oviedo will live to play another match.

Club president Toni Fidalgo said Thursday that Oviedo had staved off immediate financial doom after an external auditor discovered that the club's immediate debts were significantly lower than originally thought.

Instead of needing $2.4 million, the historic club needed $1.4 million to avoid being forced by law to dissolve on Saturday.

Oviedo's fundraising effort of selling new shares in the club has already surpassed that amount, bringing in $1.9 million since Nov. 3.

Fidalgo said that the accounting error was based on the omission from the previous audit of the money Oviedo was due for the transfer of former player Juan Mata from Valencia to Chelsea, along with some advertising revenue.

Oviedo will continue to sell new shares for $13.74, down from $77 at its initial offering 20 years ago, with the club needing another $1.3 million to ensure its viability this season.

"Now we have to keep working to make sure Oviedo can stay afloat until the end of the season,'' club spokesman David Alonso told The Associated Press.

Fidalgo, who is acting as Oviedo's caretaker president after former president Alberto Gonzalez was charged with tax evasion and went into hiding, said that the club has had various contacts with investors looking to take over the club through the purchase of a controlling stake.

"We have spoken with 12 investors. Our position with respect to some is very distant, with others it is very close,'' Fidalgo told Spanish sports daily AS. "I believe Oviedo will have a happy ending.''

Oviedo spent 38 seasons in Spain's top division before being relegated in 2001 and then falling as far as the fourth division. Besides Mata, players such as Arsenal midfielder Santi Cazorla, Swansea's Miguel "Michu'' Perez, and Atletico Madrid's Adrian Lopez have played for Oviedo. The team currently plays in the third division.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ManYou
Member Avatar
Thierry Henry
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
:cheers:
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
CockneyMackem'
Member Avatar
KING DEV
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
I'm gonna buy a share :cheers:

Posted Image
"I didnt bring the magic back, its always been here... I just came back to find it" - Bob Stokoe
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
AntMcfc
Member Avatar
POTY
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
No thanks mate, I'm not taking any offers now. We're safe.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
CockneyMackem'
Member Avatar
KING DEV
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Worlds richest man is now their top shareholder.

Posted Image
"I didnt bring the magic back, its always been here... I just came back to find it" - Bob Stokoe
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Clancy
Member Avatar
honest abe never lied
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Amazing marketing.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
AntMcfc
Member Avatar
POTY
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · General Football · Next Topic »
Add Reply