“Catalan boys and girls have 30% of the opportunities they would have if they lived elsewhere in the State”. This is the complaint made by UE Olot, as the representative of Catalan non-professional clubs along with Nàstic, at the assembly of the Catalan Football Federation (FCF) and the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF). The team from Garrotxa has raised its voice to denounce the imbalance between the number of Catalan licenses and the places obtained by Catalan clubs in the semi-professional categories (Primera, Segunda, and Tercera Federación).

“It’s a crazy league. I’ve been coaching for over 25 years and have never experienced anything like it”, assures Toni Carrillo, manager of Martinenc. His team is the leader of the Lliga Elit, the main competition in Catalan football and the most evenly matched. With five matchdays left until the end, the gap between Manlleu, the first team that would be relegated to Primera Catalana, and Sabadell B, in the promotion playoff zone for Tercera RFEF, is only three points. With the last-placed team, Santfeliuenc, it is six.

Popular football is booming in Barcelona. For some time now, young people in the capital have been flocking to their neighborhood clubs, which have become part of their social fabric on a daily basis. This is evident in Vila de Gràcia (Europa), Sant Andreu de Palomar (UE Sant Andreu), or la Verneda i la Pau (Júpiter). In Sants, where another historic team like Unió Esportiva Sants plays, this phenomenon is not reproduced. In fact, the club is becoming increasingly distant emotionally and geographically from the neighborhood and its fans, and this is explained by the fact that it has not had a home for decades, a stadium it can call its own. “We are a neighborhood club that doesn't play in its neighborhood. The team was born and grew around the historic core of Sants, but we have been competing far from there for many years,” says Artur Balaux, a lifelong Sants fan and curator of the club's historical memory. Currently, the first team plays its home games at Camp de la Bàscula, and the youth teams are spread across this same ground, l’Energia, and l’Ibèria. All of them are located in the Marina de Port neighborhood, next to the Zona Franca.“Many times people ask me: ‘Why doesn’t Sants play in Sants?’ And I answer: ‘Because we don’t have a field.’ We are exiled from our home and increasingly uprooted from the neighborhood,” comments Joan Forcadell, the club’s president. “The chain of transmission from parents to children and from grandparents to grandchildren has been broken, and of course, we have lost a lot of fans,” confirms Balaux, who is member number 18. The social decline has been accompanied by high rental costs – the lease of the three fields accounts for about 25% of the club’s annual budget – and this has been reflected on the pitch: the first team went from Tercera RFEF to Primera Catalana, two categories below, in two years, and currently occupies a relegation spot to Segunda Catalana. In 2023, Sants was a rival of Europa and Sant Andreu; as things stand, everything suggests that next season it will be five divisions lower.”

"It was almost like winning the Champions League. For any other team, it would have been just another victory, but for us, it's our first and it could be our last. What we endured was tough, quite difficult, but it was worth it," explains Sergi Pont (1998). Ribera de Ondara, the club from a town in the Segarra region with fewer than 500 inhabitants, recently broke a streak of 31 defeats and 412 days without a point with a hard-fought 4-3 victory against Santa Coloma de Queralt B, thanks to a brace from Pont. Their last win had been on January 11, 2025. This season, they had suffered seventeen defeats in seventeen matches in the fourth tier of Catalan football, the lowest division, with eight goals for and 98 against, including some particularly painful results: 13-0, 10-9, 2-10, 7-0. "When the referee blew the whistle, we couldn't believe it. We were all laughing, all shouting like mad, all freaking out. Our faces were beaming with joy and happiness," he says.

"I've already told the physio to have some dates ready. If the game is stopped, I'll try to eat and drink something before halftime. If I can't, I'll do it in the locker room," explains Yaya Sidibe, a player for Badalonawho plays this Sunday at six in the afternoon. By the time the match begins, it will have been almost 12 hours since the defender of Malian origin last ate or drank water: Sidibe is Muslim and – like the vast majority of footballers in Catalonia who are followers of Islam, as in the case of Lamine YamalOmar el Hilali and Azzedine Ounahi are observing Ramadan, which began on Wednesday. This means that for a month, sacred to them, they will fast from sunrise to sunset, which on Sunday is scheduled for 6:34 p.m., and will rise in the early hours to eat and pray.

"When they explained to us that they would be filming a series with us, we didn't imagine the magnitude of the story. We're a Third Division RFEF team... and we have seven or eight people following us around all day; none of us had ever experienced anything like this. It's very impactful!" emphasizes Josu Martínez, one of the most high-profile players in Catalan amateur football. CF Badalona, transformed into a kind of film set since October.

CE Europa is leaving Vila de Gracia. Starting next week, they will play away from the Nou Sardenya stadium because the RFEF (Royal Spanish Football Federation) requires them to "have a natural grass pitch to compete in the Primera Federación (First Division)." The club's efforts have been in vain, as they were unable to extend the six-month moratorium. since achieving promotion He has pulled every string to change a regulation he considers absurd and outdated: artificial surfaces are permitted in the Champions League and the Europa League, but not in the third tier of Spanish football. Despite promises, neither the Spanish nor the Catalan federations, nor the CSD (National Sports Council), have done enough to prevent the forced departure of Europa, a founding member of La Liga and one of the last bastions of artificial turf. popular football in the territory.

"My childhood friends are selling drugs in the favela with a gun in their hand. That's the future of Brazil: it's either football, music, or drug trafficking, and often you don't have a choice. It's luck," says Lucas Bruno de Almeida (Guarujá, São Paulo; 2006). He shared a locker room with Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsí, and Marc Bernal in Barça's youth academy and is now one of the key players for Ousadia, a team with a unique story. This team, made up entirely of Brazilians, debuted this season in the Quarta Catalana and is the eighth most followed club in Spain on Instagram, despite playing in the tenth and lowest tier. They boast a following of 1.6 million people on the platform, similar to Athletic Club. Only Real Madrid (179), Barça (144), Atlético de Madrid (18), Sevilla (3.7), Betis and Almería (2.8), and Villarreal (1.7) have more. It far surpasses Girona, triples Espanyol's, and has the same number of followers as Osasuna, Levante, Rayo Vallecano, Elche, and Alavés combined. Its most recent rivals have 164 and 699 followers, respectively.

"Not Lamine Yamal or anything, the star of Rocafonda is Adnane!", shouted a European fan in the ear of a friend from the cement stands of the Nuevo Cerdeña after Adnane Ghailan Benktib (Mataró, 2000) scored the 1-0 in the Euros. It turns out that the Villa de Gracia It is the only place in the world where its goals are celebrated as much as those of its neighbor. Lamine Yamal with Barça, and a week later the footballer himself made the La Barraqueta stadium explode with joy, where the escapulados supporters watched their team's match at the Algeciras field. That day, the humblest club in the First RFEF took the lead in the competition with a comeback of the era sealed in the 101st minute by the other genius from Rocafonda, author of a double.

In 2010, a group of parents of children who played in the youth team of FC Sant Just and who disagreed with the club's way of doing things decided to leave their town's football team to create another one from scratch. Thus was born Atlético San Justo, which last season was on the verge of promotion to the Third Division of the RFEF and which now, with the children of its founders on the pitch, is making history in the Copa del Rey: last Saturday it won 3-0 against Atlético Calatayud in the first leg of the qualifying round, and if it maintains its lead this weekend will receive a First Division team at the Sant Just Desvern municipal stadium.

Lluís Fàbregas (Tarragona, 1967) has spent half his life at Nàstic. In the 1980s, he stood in goal for the club in the Third and Second B divisions, and in the 21st century he joined the club's organizational chart, where he has done everything from leading the commercial and brand department to being its general manager for fifteen years. In the summer of 2024, he replaced Josep Maria Andreu as club president. The change came shortly after the fateful night against Málaga, marked by the decisions of Eder Mallo, which frustrated the team's promotion to Second Division nastiquer and led to an unprecedented complaint against a member of the court, admitted for processing because the judge warned of signs of "document falsification and corruption in sports."

Javi Puado (Barcelona, ​​​​1998) is the son of a striker from Alcalá de Henares who arrived in Barcelona thanks to Jaume Creixell and stayed for love. Trained at La Masia and in the Cornellà youth academy, he has been playing for Espanyol for over a decade, the club of his life and where he wants to leave his mark. The hero of the promotion to the First Division against Oviedo and of last season's agonizing salvation, he is very clear that he would reject Barça. Just renewed with the parakeet team, which has made an effort to turn him into its straw man and the "ideal captain" of a project that is looking up after years of wandering in the wilderness.

Fran Garagarza had long considered the idea of creating a second Espanyol reserve team, introducing an Espanyol C into the blue and white structure. After exploring various possibilities, in early 2025 he contacted Vilassar de Mar, a historic club from Maresme with over a century of history that competed in the Third Division RFEF. The threat of relegation from the Elite League cooled negotiations, but despite the confirmation of the relegation, talks resumed in June, concluding with an agreement whereby Vilassar would become Espanyol's second reserve team.

When Taito Suzuki (Shizuoka, 1978) saw a photograph in the press of Takefusa Kubo with tears in his eyes after his team's elimination from the Tokyo Olympics, he decided to invest in Mallorca, the club where his compatriot played at the time. He did so through his company, Taica Corporation, a Japanese multinational with more than a thousand employees and prominent in the technology sector. Originally from Shizuoka, known as Brazil of Japan Because of his passion for football, Suzuki's life has always been linked to the beautiful game. As a youngster, he played it – "I was like a Japanese Drogba," he says, laughing – and as an adult, he became involved by sponsoring Shimizu S-Pulse, his hometown club, and the team at Xuo University, where he studied.

In a bar near the Nou Sardenya, Aday Benítez meets with ARA just over 24 hours before his debut in the First Federation this Saturday at the Juventud Torremolinos ground (7:30 p.m., LaLiga+ and FC Play). After the historic promotion as champions of the Second Federation, the club is preparing for an exciting, but also very demanding season.. "It's a challenge for me too. Despite being the team with the lowest budget and having to overcome obstacles like not being able to play at the Nou Sardenya starting in January, I consider myself a great fighter. I'm convinced we can achieve it."

A few days ago, the sole judge of the Spanish Football Federation confirmed the administrative relegation of Som Maresme due to its outstanding debts. This means that the former Badalona Futur, which lost its Second Division status on the pitch last season, will also be unable to play in the Third Division due to a ruling that paints a very uncertain future for the entity: it is not guaranteed registration in the Elite League and could be forced to start from scratch in the Quarta Catalana, the last one. It is the umpteenth chapter in one of the most bizarre stories in Catalan football, that of a club that a decade ago competed in the Second Division, called Llagostera, and that in a matter of five years has changed hands, names, and locations several times amid non-payments, lawsuits, eviction notices, and deception.

In an incomparable natural setting, on the banks of the Garonne River and overlooking the green forested mountains where zinc was once mined and where brown bones now live, one of the most unique teams in Catalan football plays: Union Esportiva Bossòst. "We are the most international club in Spain," proclaims its president, Miguel Almansa, who is also the Bossòst pharmacist. a town in the Aran Valley, in the terçó de Quate Lòcs, with just over a thousand inhabitants. This small Aranese municipality is located in the northwest of Catalonia, but its life has been focused on France, in the Occitania region, rather than Lleida, of which it is a part of the province.

Bureaucracy is always a difficult task, even more so in the middle of August when many workers are on vacation. City councils take longer to process licenses and concessions, but the football league kicks off and doesn't wait for anyone. This problem, which Barça is immersed in with the reopening of the Camp Nou, also affects Rōnin FC. The team created a few weeks ago by Estrumero Ibai Llanos is due to debut on September 21 (12 pm) at the Municipal del 25 de Septiembre in Rubí.

Aside from those of world champion Argentina, the most iconic jerseys of the 2022 World Cup were those of the Danish national team; not because of the sporting achievements of the Nordic team, which was eliminated in the group stage, but because of the message their kits sought to convey. Hummel, the technical sponsor of the Danes, designed minimalist jerseys with its logo and the national team crest toned down, practically blurred, as a protest against "Qatar and its human rights record".

In today's football where everything is bought with money, a unique club survives in La Garrotxa with a very strong policy on and off the pitch, based on sustainability and proximity. "It's a project that creates a sense of pride in belonging to this family, which transforms into a bond, unity, and performance." This is how Pedro del Campo, the first captain, describes what Olot means, a team characterized by having only players from the Catalan Countries. "This generates a much stronger sense of belonging. The new signings quickly get into the swing of things, get to know the club, its positioning, and we form a family. This connection translates into a good rapport on the pitch and into results," the player assures.