Two seasons with Rayo Vallecano

Author: Raül Pope Fargüell

When I first started going to watch Rayo Vallecano those were exciting days. We bought our Rayo season tickets for 90€ and a friend and I met another Rayo fan, randomly, in a bar across from where we worked and where he was studying Spanish and with that he said he also went with someone else, thus we became a foursome. In reality we were only three as getting out of bed on a Sunday morning, as most of the games were played, proved too difficult, and the Saturday night games had a horrible habit of clashing with Saturday night drinking time. So the three of us carried on, all relatively new to Madrid, and fascinated that Vallecas and its hair-styles hadn’t yet seen in the nineties, “this must be perm central” we thought, and I imagine where a lot of the nation’s marijuana is consumed along with the largest concentration of Liverpool FC tracksuit bottoms. Vallecas really is an entity all to itself, but in a charming way, a real family club where children learn to hurl abuse at linesman from their fathers, just as their father did from his father and so on and so forth, irrespective of whether it really was off-side, or not.

The action on the pitch left us with little time to admire the crowd around us, Rayo, then managed by the current Betis boss Pepe Mel, had a consummate ability to entertain. We saw three and four-nil drubbings of Recreativo and Castellon, a three-two loss at home to Nàstic and a four- all and a three-three draw against Hércules and Real Sociedad that will stay with me forever. Rayo had a habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, or coming out in the second half determined, seemingly, to turn those three points into one. It was after such a game against Pascal Cygan’s Cartagena (yes, that’s where he’s ended up) in early February that Pepe Mel got the chop for the side’s up-and-down form and Rayo continued to slip further out of contention for the play-offs after a promising start. Many were annoyed at Pepe’s departure as really he looked good in a suit, that’s what we thought anyhow, and the team were probably punching above their weight but ended the season in a slightly disappointing eleventh.

The time came again to renew our season tickets and felt a bit let down when we didn’t get a free t-shirt this time and had to pay 20€ more for the pass! Rayo’s ladies team were in the Champions League and the upping in price gave us the chance to see some first-class ladies football which we said we were going to see (we didn’t). Little known José Ramón Sandoval was made coach and I wouldn’t say no-one had ever heard of him, because those who followed Rayo B would have known that he took the team to their best ever position, winning the Spanish third division, but since we had no interest in much beyond mullets and eighties-style clothing, our only immediate concern was that Sandoval’s cut in a suit might struggle to match Pepe’s.

The season started well: eleven goals in the opening five games and unbeaten in eight before losing away to Real Madrid conquering Alcorcón. Despite getting stuffed by Pepe Mel’s Betis and other promotion favourites Celta Vigo, four-nil away and three-one at home, it was an innocuous enough away win at Salamanca that seemed to hold something of a clue about the club’s potential that season. The team bossed the game and came away with a one-nil win and Sandoval came out to wave to us and responded to the crowd’s “Jump Sandoval jump” by doing just that during an interview with Canal Plus. Rayo didn’t go top that day, but Rayo went into second and it felt like the title race was serious and we went to have lunch in Salamanca, after a midday kick-off, pretty happy, and hungry.

Under Sandoval the team had changed. The erratic results had disappeared and the defence looked assured and the goalkeeper had learnt the catch those cross thingys that Spanish goalkeepers seem afraid of. The truth is he had changed none of the playing staff that Pepe Mel had under him, he had simply done something, though we couldn’t put our fingers on it. If the truth be told we were slightly more bored at the lack of three-three last-minute heart-break but it did give us times to invent more names for the regular characters in the crowd and we duly added ‘Rambo perm’ and ‘Vallecas Babe’ to ‘Bubble-hat perm’, ‘Baby-faced perm’, ‘King perm’ and ‘flagman’.

The title race never quite developed as it may well might have done, but Celta’s knack for losing at home meant that even with a dozen games to go Rayo’s ineptitude to play under pressure counted for little and second place wasn’t quite met with a sprint to line as a limp, but it all counts. Promotion was confirmed with a three-nil win at home against Xerez last week when the pressure was off and the party atmosphere was in full swing.

Off-the-field disaster has meant that the players, in amongst all this, haven’t been paid since December and a recent pay-offer was rejected by the players so the ground staff could be paid instead. Teresa Rivero sold the club to new president Raúl Martín after her husband’s company, Nuevo Rumasa, went bankrupt, to add to the list of dodgy businesses Rivero and her husband, super-crook José María Ruiz-Mateos, have presided over.

How will Rayo do next season? They’ll probably go straight back down, but the realness of this club means the fans will enjoy shouting abuse at whoever comes to take a corner, just like Daddy used to .