Inside Llagostera: The miracle club within touching distance of La Liga

UE Llagostera are the smallest club ever to reach the Spanish second tier after six promotions in a decade, and working on by far the smallest budget of the 22 teams. Budgets are worked out depending on the size of the club and number of socios. Betis had 30,000, Llagostera 700 at the start of the season - they should not be where they are.

Hailing from a tiny town of 8,000 in northern Catalonia near Girona, they had to leave their own town for this season because their home ground amounted to an artificial pitch with a few rows of seats along one side. It was fit for a level seven or eight team, which is what Llagostera have been for most of their history.

With miniscule funds and playing against well-established clubs, they did what seemed impossible and won promotion last year. Spain glanced at the story and looked away. The experts were certain that they would go straight back down.

“We read and heard what everybody said about us,” said captain Jordi Lopez, a veteran at 34, formerly of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla (winning the UEFA Cup), Mallorca, Racing Santander, QPR, Swansea City, Vitesse Arnhem, OFI Crete and Hoverla in Ukraine. “It made us more motivated, but after 10 or so games they all thought they were right. I saw one pundit say that we would be relegated after half a season. But I knew they would be proved wrong because I know what we have here.”

The miracle of Llagostera seemed to have been punctured by reality. A team playing in a rented stadium 25 kilometres from their own town do not have the foundations to compete with sides like Betis and their top scorer Ruben Castro, who earns €3 million per year – more than the entire Llagostera squad.

The Catalan side won only three of their opening 18 matches and were stuck at the bottom of the table. Their plans of stabilising themselves in their new division looked overly ambitious. Still, they’d have enjoyed the novelty of a season in the second division, right?

But then something strange happened. Starting mid-December, Llagostera began winning. They’ve since won away at Mallorca, Osasuna and Albacete. At home they’ve beaten Valladolid, Barca B, Recreativo Huelva and Alaves since their upturn. They’ve picked up 20 points from their last 24 and shot up the table. The division’s form team, they're now only four points off Zaragoza in a play-off spot. They couldn’t go up, could they?

No, it’s stupid to even think about that. Even Eibar, famously the smallest ever team to reach the top flight in Spain last May, were described as “giants compared to us” by Llagostera’s president Isabel Tarago at the start of the season.

Llagostera don’t even have a stadium. Their council-owned ground was woefully undeveloped, with one small stand offering cover for 200 by the side of the pitch, not even enough to shelter their average crowds of 400 last season. The artificial pitch is against the regulations too.

After talks with high-flying second division neighbours Girona about a ground share broke down, Llagostera instead relocated to a stadium in Palamos on the Mediterranean coast 27 kilometres away, with its natural grass pitch and stands seating 5,800 supporters. After being forced to play their first game behind closed doors because of the actions of one freelance racist idiot who’d never been seen at a game before or since, they worked hard at increasing their fan base by offering cheap season tickets and marketed themselves as a team for the Costa Brava.

They aimed for average crowds of 2,000 but have exceeded that with 2,400. It’s increasing too and the €4,000 rent they pay each month to fourth division Palamos is helping solve their economic problems.

“We had a lot of new players and they needed time to settle,” explains Lopez of the poor start to the season. “It was also the first year that the club had gone full-time professional.” Their wages were paid by €2 million from television money against €20,000 last season.

In October, Oriol Alsina returned to the club with manager Luis Carillo. The old management team, who’d briefly left for neighbours Girona, were back.

“They brought the old atmosphere back,” says Lopez, who has shared a dressing room with Iniesta, Motta, Beckham, Valdes, Raul, Figo and Roberto Carlos. “We have BBQs, we have dinners together on the coast. The atmosphere in this dressing room is fantastic, as good as I’ve experienced in all my career. That’s the key. There are no big egos here. Of course you need players who are technically good enough and because we’re such a little team we have to work harder than anyone else. And we do. We play 4-4-2, we are solid in defence, we know every player very well.”

That chemistry and team spirit has not happened by accident.

“We look at the personality of players,” explains Alsina, 46 and one of three trainers. “We’d identified lots of players who are good enough to play here, but not signed them because we feared their personality isn’t right for us. They need to be about the team. They need to work and to be humble. They need to love football, be hungry for football and respect that we have 300 youth players at the club.

“They only train here two hours a day. They need to be good people for the other 22 hours in the day. A bad player can break the group. Here, every 15 days the players who’ve lost the little competitions we have in training have to treat the rest, including our coaches, to a meal. The fines I have for various offences? They pay for BBQs.”

They're delighted with this season and the form of players like Josep Maria Comadevall (known as Pitu), who played one game for Barca in 2006 before slipping down the leagues. Now 31, he's shining in the second division. But it doesn’t seem right to pick out individuals when it’s not about them.

Clubs who rise quickly are usually bankrolled. Not Llagostera.

“I keep looking for holes and faults and can’t find any,” says one previously sceptical Spanish agent. “They’re a very, very well run club and absolutely transparent when it comes to money. Most Spanish clubs are not, which is to their advantage.”

“You get your wages paid on time, all of the time here,” says Lopez. “That’s not normal in Spain.”

The location helps, though not everyone knows where the club is from.

“I admit I had to get the map out to find out where Llagostera was,” reveals striker Artur, on loan from Cordoba. “It’s a tiny club, but that has advantages. You feel like part of a family and living in the Costa Brava is beautiful.”

“You are treated like a son,” Lopez agrees. “There’s no pressure, even if you lose.”

It feels like family because it is. Club president Tarrago is married to technical director (the key position in Spain) Alsina. The couple work in textiles and live in Llagostera. Alsina, who has been at the club through all the promotions, decides who’s going to come. He knows his club are minnows, but he shows them how far they’ve come.

“I was in Ukraine when my wife had our second child,” explains Lopez, “she wanted to come home and Alsina presented the project to us.”

That was to have a settled third-tier club and seemed ambitious. Luckily for Llagostera, home is Catalonia, which produces brilliant footballers. If they can’t play for Barca or Espanyol and they want to stay near home, then Llagostera suddenly becomes attractive. Players can live by the sea and the still snow-capped Pyrenees sit in the distance across lush rice fields peppered with medieval villages. Some of the world’s best cyclists choose to live in the area.

Not every player is so enthused. Llagostera’s goalkeeper cried at the prospect of joining them. And they weren’t tears of joy. There’s a happy ending though. Last week, he renewed his contract for two more years.

Llagostera play at Racing Santander on Sunday.

“A historic team with a history in the Primera,” says Alsina. “But we’ll go to win, as we always do.”

As he’s talking to us, his physio comes to inform him that a key player will be missing. Alsina recoils, then smiles. “We get knocked down, we get back up again,” he says. “Every game is a mountain, nothing has changed.”

The journey to Santander is as follows. On Saturday, they’ll take a 90-minute coach journey to Barcelona airport, then a 90-minute flight to Bilbao, then another 90-minute coach to the Cantabrian city.

“It will be late by the time the game finishes so we’ll return by bus through the night afterwards,” explains Lopez. “It will take around nine hours and we’ll get back home around 8am. Spending a night on a bus isn’t ideal because it’s hard to sleep, but that’s the norm for the smaller teams in this division.”

Their 11-game run in is very difficult, with games against seven teams who’ve played in La Liga in the last decade.

“It’s a miracle,” says Lopez, before pausing to correct himself. “No, it’s not a miracle. I don’t believe in miracles. We’ve got to where we are with very hard work.”

When it’s put to Lopez that he could return to the Bernabeu or Camp Nou as a player, he laughs.

“It doesn’t cost anything to dream does it?” concludes Lopez. “My experience in football tells me that everything is possible. But step-by-step. That’s our philosophy.”