After four seasons in office, this year Christopher Sanchez has left the presidency of the Peñas del Girona Federation. It is a symbolic act, because, at the end of the day, “what we do is an exchange of roles with Pepe Sierra (vice-president), who also deserves to have this position”. Thus, explains Sánchez, “we will both continue to work in the same areas, with him taking on more of the day-to-day management and me of external, institutional relations”. Despite being a symbolic act, however, this change serves to commemorate the work, often in the shadows, to which this entity, born in 2017, is dedicated.
It wasn’t until the 19th that Cristóbal assumed the role of president, in the now-disappeared place Quim Alegret, but by then I had been in a relationship for some time. Sánchez, who has been a councilor since 2015 and, therefore, in the midst of the Process, believed that the image that visiting fans took of Girona affected not only that of the club but that of the city. “Then they came scared, and it didn’t cost anything to bring a representative from the City Council to welcome them to the club meetings, accompany them and show that nothing was as they thought.”
Little by little, the visitors published on their websites and networks that the Girona fans were fantastic, exponentially multiplying the impression they had, “and this is important, because you go around Spain with the name of the club, but also with the name of the city, and you have to take care of it”. In 2018, in fact, the white-and-red crowd was recognized as the best in the League. “No one could see the club or the city, and now it’s very hot”, celebrates Sánchez, remembering the day of the promotion in Tenerife, “when the president of the Federation of Ponferrada came to cheer us on”. In this way, Montilivi has become a non-confrontational stadium, “earning the respect of the rest of the clubs in the State”.
“All this recognition”, explains the former vice-president, “is also seen in the role we have in united hobbies, where we coordinate the social commission giving subsidies to all the federations». The association of clubs with First, Second, and some historic clubs that are no longer in professional football has “a very strong structure”, meeting often with LaLiga, which also contributes financially. “We have achieved many things this way”, he says. Without going any further, the recent establishment of a minimum of 300 seats at 30 euros for visiting fans among the majority of teams in the top category (Girona included), is the result of these conversations; or the Sports Tourism initiative, which encourages travel by agreeing on timetables that allow you to visit the city where the game is played and be able to return home at the correct time. “We look for a match, a day and an hour and it is given to us; it’s difficult because usually the televisions have a lot of weight when determining these things».
But the Peñas Federation, of course, also works at home. “During my mandate there were two years in which activity was reduced due to the pandemic, but we did not stop.” One of the most prominent tasks at that time was to find a solution to the ticket allocation system at the beginning of the 2021/22 academic year. In addition, cohesion between clubs has been greatly increased, holding an annual 7-a-side football tournament and a weekend meeting “to get to know each other more”, as well as the Congress of Aficiones Unidas. Of the 25 clubs that Girona has, 19 are part of the Federation of Clubs, with the exceptions of Jovent Gironí (“a separate entertainment group”), those of Ripoll, Perpignan and Tramuntana, apart from the “exceptional cases” of those in India and the Arab Emirates.
However, not everything is flowers and violets, because although relations with the board have always been good, “there is a lot of room for improvement”. The former president refers to “administrative management, especially with season tickets and the stadium”. The infrastructure and mobility “are not first class, and we are no longer a new club”, he says. “This season, thank God, we will have decent toilets in the Gol North, but you can’t continue like this, because there is a feeling of discomfort”, he adds, convinced that too many things are done in the short term. “We can’t have a stadium like that. We wanted to go to Europe, but if Liverpool come and start dancing, Gol Nord falls!”. “The economic situation, of course, is what it is, and it’s not that the property doesn’t want these improvements, but we have to be on top of these things.” It will now be about a month, for example, the relocation of season ticket holders from the first row of the Superior Tribune, where a new VIP area will be created, was criticized.
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Be that as it may, after having “improved the relationship with the club, between fans and the visualization of the team, the fans and the city”, what makes Sánchez most proud, also satisfied to be able to count on a Town Hall premises in Palau-sacosta, is “being alive and being a small part of the great era, the golden age of Girona, and hopefully it will continue!”.
2023-07-23 04:30:23
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