Global Fútbol

The new investment group that arrived at Real Zaragoza in April 2022 did so to lead a project that has promotion as the main objective. Having now spent one year in charge at the club, changes have been seen throughout the institution this season as they pursue this goal. To achieve it, the new ownership group has developed a strategic plan based on four pillars, one that Raúl Sanllehí, the club’s general director, has discussed in this interview for LaLiga.

- Having now spent a year at Real Zaragoza, what is your assessment of this period?

We’re at the point of the one-year anniversary and we have to keep looking to improve, but when I look back at where we were then and where we are now then the balance is clearly positive. In making the comparison between before and now, there are three dimensions. The first dimension is the club itself, because it was a club in a very precarious and complicated situation, a club that was, you could say, depressed. It was going through financial proceedings, it had a debt that was very hard to maintain with the level of income, there were very deteriorated and obsolete facilities and, in sporting terms, the club had been in LaLiga SmartBank for nine years, which was not normal given the team’s history. The second dimension would be the environment around the club and by this I mean the fans, the local press and even the city of Zaragoza and region of Aragon as a whole. What we found when we arrived was that, in a way, the environment was frustrated and depressed but had an impressive potential because the pride of the people of Zaragoza and the pride of the Real Zaragoza fans is enormous. Then, the third dimension is what we had in the first-team squad, which had some very important players emerging from the youth academy but a complicated contractual situation overall. There were needs in various positions, but we did have a squad with a very good atmosphere in the dressing room and made up of very good professionals, and I felt this was something that had to be encouraged. From there, our strategy has consisted of reactivating the club through optimism.

When we first arrived, we started to work on two main areas. Firstly, there was the sporting project, which is the driving force of a football club. We looked for immediate performance so that the team and the way it played would connect with the fans. The first thing we did was to address the young players who came from the youth academy and to give them fresh motivation, renewing them as part of the new project. That was very welcome news for them and also a message to our fans. They are players who are treasured the most because they come from the youth academy, so being able to combine the sporting side with the emotional side made a lot of sense for us. We also made some very tactical additions in the positions we felt we needed to reinforce. The pillars of the sporting project are the coach and the sporting director, and we have that well covered. As for the management project, we are looking to create an efficient and professional structure by controlling the debt, the accounts and the procedures. In short, we want to be efficient.

In terms of infrastructure, we have made some improvements to the sporting complex with two new artificial grass pitches, which helps us a lot with the young players. We have also built a new gym for the first team, which is a clear qualitative leap from where we were. We have opened a new club store too, which is also a public message for our members and it has been very successful, both in terms of image and business. And then there is another very important project, which is the new stadium.

- On the new stadium, what is your assessment of the preliminary project plans?

We have presented the preliminary project for the new La Romareda Stadium, which we are presenting at the municipal level, and this stadium must be the home of the Zaragozista family, of the people of Zaragoza and an emblem for Aragon. This was announced on the May 12th, as the RFEF had set that date as the deadline for the delivery of the documentation required from the cities bidding to host matches at the 2030 World Cup. Zaragoza, as the fourth largest city in Spain, with its privileged location on the peninsula and its great football history, should be a World Cup host city. Therefore, we have designed a preliminary project that would meet all the FIFA standards to be able to host World Cup matches and that would provide the city and Aragon with a leading sporting venue. We are going to work over the next few months to be awarded the tender, which is open until September. Given that it is a preliminary project at this stage, we have to finalise it, so there could be modifications of some of the details.

What we already have clear is that we want an iconic and identifiable stadium. We didn’t want a stadium that was just a place to play football, as we want one that can host other important events. It was important that people would recognise the Real Zaragoza stadium when they saw it. To do this, we worked on a unique design and it had to be inspired by Aragon. With this in mind, the team led by César Azcárate, the architect who has headed up this preliminary project for IDOM (the prestigious and renowned architectural firm), met our expectations. As such, we presented a stadium shaped and inspired by something that is part of our roots: the Cierzo, the famous Zaragoza winds. In short, we want a sports venue that is a benchmark, a stadium that is equipped with the highest standards of comfort, sustainable elements and the latest technologies and a stadium capable of creating an unbeatable atmosphere for football and other events.

- In short, what is the club’s roadmap in a business sense?

For me, it was fundamental to determine who I was going to work with, who my fellow travellers were going to be, and I found an investor group with financial resources and experience in the world of football. It is a diverse group, both internationally and in terms of background, and they gave me a lot of confidence in terms of how to work and how to reactivate this club, which was basically using the strength of Zaragoza and the roots it has in Aragon. They understood from the beginning that it is something to respect and that we have to grow from there.

With all this, we created a strategic plan to address all areas. This strategic plan is based on four verticals: the sporting department, where we look to create a structure with the fundamentals (coach and sporting director) to sustain a project in the medium and long term and to create an evolutionary strategy that in the medium term will give us a much-desired promotion and in the long term allow us to consolidate our place in the top tier; the management area, and by this I mean administration, purchasing, finance, etc., where we’ll look for solvency and sound control of the finances and processes; the business area, which is the ‘fuel’ to drive the engine that is the first team and the sporting section through revenue from sponsors, matchday (season tickets and matchday ticket sales) and the store; and the legal and competitions department, which must give us legal security and peace of mind with our contracts.

In addition to these four pillars, we have a horizontal axis that must unify and give meaning and harmony to the club’s entire strategy, which is the department of communication, brand and institutional relations. The voice of the club has to present a coherent message to our fans about what we represent and what we are doing. The objective of this department is to modernise the club, both with digitalisation and with the type of message we present, always based on proactivity and not reactivity.

- You say that the objective is promotion.

Real Zaragoza is a sleeping giant that is in the process of waking up and is already starting to stretch. People always ask me ‘is this project a promotion project?’ My answer is always blunt and emphatic: yes, it is a promotion project. That doesn’t mean that this year’s objective was promotion. The objective for me as the person in charge at the club is to see a positive evolution, to see that we are getting better every year. Only by getting better each year, by improving year after year, will we reach our objective of promotion.

There are several things that bring us closer to that objective, such as: the importance we in Zaragoza place on the youth academy; the addition of important tactical signings; the group synergies that, through the influence of our investors at other clubs, give us access to interesting players; and, finally, the execution and optimisation of performance through the coach and the sporting director.

This club’s strategy is based on achieving promotion in the short term. I don’t know what position we will finish in this year, but if next year we finish in a better position than this year and the year after that we improve again, this will lead us to the long-sought-after goal of promotion, which is only a first objective. We don’t want to become a yo-yo club, as when we get promoted we want to stay there.

- How is the club working on digitalisation?

We have identified this as an absolute priority because it will bring us closer to more fans. We are in the process of breaking down the gap that separated us from the younger generations. We have experienced significant growth on social media, because when we started out we had just 600,000 followers and now we have over one and a half million. We have been pioneers in the passbook subscription, as well as the payment for tickets with Bizum. We are making, facilitating and helping the business as well with all this. We also have an online member’s area that is very intuitive and helps our members a lot with many of their transactions. Together with LaLiga, we have launched a new website as we had a very obsolete website before but now we have a website that has more audiovisual content, is more modern, has a fresher feel and is in line with what we want to transmit.

- The arrival of the investment group is an opportunity for internationalisation. Why do you think internationalisation is important and how is the club working on it?

Globalisation is a reality and it means you have to be very aware of internationalisation, as it opens the door to new markets and greater business opportunities, visibility and image. Ultimately, when you go to sign players, you are competing with a global market. The more weight you have in that global world, the more attractive you will be for the player you are competing for with another club in France or Italy, for example. Internationalisation has two aspects. One is more global, at LaLiga level, and we are part of the competition so the internationalisation of LaLiga is something that benefits us directly. Then there is the individual version at club level. Both have to go hand in hand.

Without contradicting the above, because internationalisation is very important, we also need to understand the moment in which the club finds itself at an economic level and with open fronts at the local level. We have to prioritise and that does not mean turning our back on internationalisation. For now, rather than a global strategy, we are carrying out tactical initiatives. For example, we have launched a Weibo profile for China and we are in the initial phase of opening up to MENA by working with LaLiga to have the website in Arabic. But, at a strategic level, I wouldn’t call it international expansion yet, and I stress the yet, because we do want to do it.

The international nature of our investment group obliges us to do more, and gives us a very good opportunity both in the United States and in South America. In the phase we are in now, and with the problems we have, we are making the most of LaLiga’s international platform and strategy. In the medium and long term, we will gain much more weight in internationalisation. It is not the same to launch an international strategy when you are in the top division as when you are in the second division, and our objective is to be in the top division. The platform of being in the top division makes a lot of difference. It will also depend on the players we bring in, because there are players who are market openers. A good Japanese player, historically, will open you up to Japan, while a good Colombian player will open you up to Colombia.

- How does Real Zaragoza view the agreement with CVC?

Collectively, we can only applaud this global, strategic and necessary agreement. It is an agreement that gives a real boost to competition, which is what we all need. We are fish in a sea, so the healthier and bigger the sea then the better off we will all be. It is an excellent agreement because we will grow as much as our competition grows.

For Real Zaragoza in particular, the financial injection it gave us was vital. We were drowning with a very serious liquidity problem and it gave us the oxygen to reach the shore. Now that we have reached the shore, we have to compete. As a consequence of our performance and circumstances, nothing more than that, and given the years taken into account when it comes to the distribution over the last few years, in which we have always been in the second division, we are in a position that is not historically our position and at a disadvantage.