Villarreal Giving Free Season Tickets To Unemployed Fans

La Liga Loca, an Offside favourite, recently detailed a ten-step process to fix an aged and crumbling La Liga. Most of it involved death by jagged toothed ancient monsters – we concur – but the tenth and final step revealed something a bit more pragmatic (albeit slightly less appealing): Copy Villarreal.

It’s a big club from a tiny town that has a rarely-heard-from owner and a manager, Manuel Pellegrini, who has been in his job for five seasons. The team invests enormously in its youth system and global scouting network and generally buys low and sells high. And this is why they are back in the last eight of the Champions League once again – and why pretty much everyone in Spain has big love for them.

Well now there’s another reason, because they’re combating the melancholy of the global financial crisis by giving free season tickets to unemployed holders for 2009-10.

Club president Fernando Roig:

”Season-ticket holders who are on the dole will be allowed in free next year,” Roig told a news conference.

”The idea is to think of the club’s wider social base and those who have been unlucky to lose their jobs so they can continue to watch football in the Madrigal.”

The fans as a genuine part of the club. What a noble idea.

This is about so much more than football. It’s a sliver of sunshine in a unendingly bleak world for many of the world’s recently unemployed. Many people will have known someone to lose a job during this crisis, but one only has to look at the newspaper headlines to see its widespread reach. The increasing rate of suicide is enough to send one into a bout of depression. And while this may only be two hours a week, more often than not, it’s two hours of hope, joy and an escape from a world which some may feel has turned its back.

So maybe it’s time for big love for Villarreal outside of Spain – but more importantly, maybe there’s something more in that “Copy Villarreal” suggestion that previously though. Maybe it’s time clubs both inside and outside of Spain paid a bit more attention.

But while Villarreal may be in the giving mood, something says they won’t be quite as philanthropic with Valencia’s financial misfortunes.

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Category: World Football