Working class Rayo Vallecano defy the odds, can they withstand Premier League money power?
FINAL COUNTDOWN: A general view of the Rayo Vallecano players during the training session at the Red Bull Arena, Leipzig. Pic: Adam Davy/PA Wire.
"Twenty-five years on, Europe will see us again," read the banner at Rayo Vallecano's tiny, concrete cauldron a year ago, as fans poured on to the pitch at the Estadio de Vallecas to celebrate the club's return to continental football.
What even the most romantic believers at this working-class club on the outskirts of Madrid might not have imagined was that 12 months later, Rayo are preparing for their first European final.
They face Crystal Palace in the Conference League final in Leipzig on Wednesday. For Rayo, it is not just a football match. It is a vindication of their insistence on doing things their own way.
Their supporters like to call themselves "different", the last of the 'barrio' teams -- not just in the neighbourhood, but of it.
Once a separate municipality before being absorbed by Madrid in 1950, it remains a consciously working-class district where blocks of flats huddle around the 14,700-capacity stadium, with washing hanging across neighbouring narrow streets.
That intimacy has often turned to anger during a season in which Rayo's players, staff and supporters have all clashed with owner Raul Martin Presa.
In February, Rayo were forced to play local rivals Atletico Madrid at Leganes' Butarque stadium after LaLiga ruled the Vallecas pitch unplayable. The fixture was relocated and Spanish police barred ticket sales for security reasons with the attendance being limited to season-ticket holders.
The club's ultras group, Los Bukaneros, urged a boycott, and only a little more than 5,000 supporters attended. Those who did made their feelings clear, first outside the ground and then inside it.
Rayo won 3-0, but after each goal the soundtrack was not celebration. It was a unified chant of "Presa: leave now!"
Rayo's players and coaching staff have complained of "obsolete infrastructure" at both the Estadio de Vallecas and the training ground, saying the latter had been unusable for months in pre-season.
They also described "deficient conditions, worsening as the season progressed" at their home ground, including a lack of hot water on some days and inadequate cleaning of the changing room.
Presa has not commented publicly on the complaints. Yet in spite of the unrest, Rayo have kept climbing. Thanks to the resilience of their players and the work of manager Inigo Perez, the club now stand one victory from a European trophy.
Two goals in each leg of the semi-finals from Brazilian striker Alemao helped Rayo earn successive 1-0 victories against Strasbourg to reach the Conference League final, as they bid to become the first Spanish team to win the competition after Real Betis lost in the final last year.
Crystal Palace arrive with their own sense of history. In their first European campaign, and after dropping from the Europa League to the Conference League because of UEFA regulations, Palace have navigated a long, uneven but ultimately brilliant run to the final.
However, with Arsenal still come to in the Champions League final and the Europa League already under lock and key at Aston Villa, Premier League dominance points to a worrying trend. Gradually but discernibly, Premier League clubs are dominating Europe’s smaller competitions in a way Uefa surely could never have intended.
Villa were the eighth English finalists from the last 22 teams to reach the Europa League’s showpiece. After Palace beat Shakhtar in the semi final of the Conference League, a jubilant Dean Henderson said Crystal Palace “need to get back what we deserve”. It was a reminder they felt affronted to be in the Conference League after losing their appeal against demotion from the Europa League. Nonetheless, after lurching through the early stages with the cavalry sometimes held back, once the business end arose Palace were simply too good. Fiorentina and Shakhtar Donetsk, clubs with rich European pedigree, battled gamely, but neither came especially close to holding them off.
If Palace win in Leipzig, they will be the third English winners of the Conference League in four years. Two things can be true: it is a fairytale achievement, in their own context, for Palace to reach this level of a continental event for the first time; it is also the case that, even when stumbling over their own shoelaces, Premier League teams are achieving exactly what their colossal financial advantage has long threatened.
That was not the aim of the Conference League, which was created to offer sides outside the modern-day elite a realistic shot at Europe in an age when the Champions League is – with honourable but sparse exceptions – a gated community. It has certainly given plenty more of them a chance to play, even if there is an argument it also has the effect of keeping them at arm’s length. Listening to executives at certain well-known clubs, among them domestic champions, describing regular Conference League football as the realistic height of their ambitions sticks in the craw.
Olympiakos’s victory felt closer to an intended consequence, but even that has the feel of an anomaly two years on. Palace will fancy their chances this time and a glance at their off-pitch firepower suggests they should: last year’s £200m revenue made them the 26th-richest team in Europe, according to Deloitte’s money league. It is almost four times that of Rayo, mid-table in a La Liga whose rump has been left far behind by Premier League clout.
One hundred and fifty-two games – 188 in the Europa League – and then the English win? The risk is it will soon feel like that. The Europa League has been democratised and weakened since Uefa removed the safety net for some Champions League dropouts to enter its knockouts. That is far better for the competition’s integrity, but has cast the power of its Premier League representatives into stark relief.
It is one thing when, as in 2022-23, Juventus, Sevilla, Roma and Bayer Leverkusen are around to plunder the semi-final spots. This time Villa and Nottingham Forest, neither hitting top gear, cruised through a weak field to face each other in the last four. Freiburg, whose £140m revenue is cast into the shadow by Villa’s £378m haul, hardly had a prayer in the final.
Even if Arsenal win the Champions League, perhaps creating a first English clean sweep, only two of the Premier League’s preposterous six representatives reached the last eight of that competition. Maybe the margins simply tighten at the top; perhaps, in a suggestion that itself bodes ill, the Premier League is underperforming.
Proposed financial redistribution models for Uefa’s club competitions, including innovative suggestions from the Union of European Clubs, tend to draw short shrift from those running the sport. In any case it is hard, given the bleak outlook for domestic television rights revenues for much of Europe, to see how the Premier League does not continue to pull away. If English clubs continue to trample to the finish line then, for as long as no solutions are found, their victories may be accompanied by an increasingly bitter taste.
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