Go down to Second to save yourself

ALBERTO DEL CAMPO TEJEDOR Professor of Social Anthropology at the Pablo de Olavide University

Monday 20 December 2021, 12:53

Cádiz is in relegation places. Ben Harburg, the American multimillionaire businessman, who has taken over 6.5% of the shares of the Cadista entity, says he has the solution so that his team not only remains in the First Division, but achieves, in two or three years, compete in the Europa League: globalize the club. The strategy is to increase the number of followers on an international scale and especially in the world’s largest market: China. How to do it? Creating content on the networks for the Chinese consumer, getting Chinese sponsors and, above all, signing a Chinese player.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese fans follow Espanyol on television (and pay for it, of course) because Wu Lei plays there. Harburg believes that Cádiz should emulate other Premier teams based in Beijing. This is where the Cádiz brand should be sold. For example, a few months ago Manchester United opened a leisure center in the Chinese capital with the characteristic nickname of Old Trafford: ‘Theater of Dreams’. The place offers an interactive journey through the history of the club, so that the Asian fan can consume all kinds of merchandising and even savor the appreciated Anglo-Saxon cuisine!

Harburg, who has lived in up to 20 different places (including El Puerto de Santa María), is aware that many fans “do not understand or do not want Cádiz to be a global team”, but considers it inevitable if profitability is desired. Homogenization is one of the facets of globalization: the Cádiz fans, like the club’s own history, may be unique, but the commercial logic would eventually prevail. The result is that clubs increasingly have the same business structure, set the same objectives and the same strategies to achieve them. Even what you see in a stadium would be similar. Having a flat of wine in the old town of Vitoria is a very different experience than drinking a beer at a beach bar in Cádiz. Globalization has not blurred all cultural peculiarities. However, football is becoming more homogeneous. Except for the shirts, it is already impossible to distinguish on the pitch if Cádiz or Alavés play.

Despite this evidence, the veteran fan also knows that the exact same cultural patterns are not assimilated in El Puerto de Santa María and Jerez (where Kiko, Güiza or Joaquín learned to bargain), as in the Danok Bat in Bilbao (where they formed Íñigo Lekue). In anthropological terms it can be affirmed that, despite the growing uniformity, the homegrown players still nurture different «football cultures», just as the young people of Chiclana and Lekeitio have a different way of having fun, some at the San Antonio Fair, others at the «Anztar Eguna», the day of the geese. Yes, clubs and players are becoming more and more alike, but cultural singularities persist that can be enhanced or canceled.

While some Cádiz managers want the club to follow in the footsteps of the great Premier teams, a group of fans promotes the idea that Athletic’s philosophy should be copied: only soccer players born or trained in the province would wear yellow, which would ensure that the specificity in the stands was consistent with a peculiar idiosyncrasy also on the pitch. Another group of Cadistas has launched an idea against the current: they should go down to Second. There they would be safe from predators who act as if Mágico González had never set foot on the Carranza lawn, today renamed Nuevo Mirandilla: “We better get down now.” It sounds funny, but some fans are serious about it. At least, with the ingenious ambiguity with which serious things are usually formulated in the Silver Cup, even if it is not yet Carnival. It seems that, despite everything, each hobby is different. It remains to be seen who has the power to chart the destiny of a club, what model is imposed and for whom. Because maybe Cádiz becomes so indistinguishable from any other team, that then there will be nothing left to sell.