On a cold January evening in northwest Spain, fantasy threatened to become reality. For 15 surreal minutes, Barcelona – 27-time La Liga champions and five-time 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, 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.
