The TV3 reporter was interviewing the excited players of Unió Esportiva Sant Andreu on the pitch where they had just achieved promotion, and a fan showed their mobile phone to the camera. The screen read: “Collboni, put in the grass”. It referred to the natural grass essential for playing in the new category and was addressed to the mayor, as the stadium, Narcís Sala, is municipal.

Sant Andreu is celebrating. One of the historic Catalan football clubs has been able to celebrate promotion to Primera RFEF, after the triumph of the four-bar team (2-1) against Reus Reddis in a Narcís Sala packed to the rafters. More than a decade later, the club returns to the third tier of state football after a strange week as the team's coach, Natxo González, suffered a heart attack that led to him being hospitalized. Today, logically, he could not be on the bench for the match against the Reus team, a club where he also worked. The Reus fans present at Narcís Sala showed banners of support for González, who could not witness the triumph on the field with goals from Mendes and Señé, from a penalty. Goals that led to a great celebration on the stadium's pitch.

In the 2018-2019 season, he played for Sant Andreu and earned 700 euros, which he spent almost entirely on gas. In the mornings, he took a lifeguard course at the Manlleu swimming pool, ate a packed lunch in the driver's seat of his gray Seat Ibiza at a rest stop along the C-17 highway, trained in the afternoons at the Narcís Sala stadium, and arrived back in Osona after dark. This Thursday, Ferran Jutglà returns to his old neighborhood as a Celta Vigo player. From playing for Sant Andreu against a La Liga team to playing for a La Liga team against Sant Andreu. "I'm very happy. I was really looking forward to playing Sant Andreu. It's a very special match for me," the striker from Sant Julià de Vilatorta (1999) explained to ARA, just hours before the second-round Copa del Rey match between the two sides (9 pm, Catalunya 2).

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.

Years ago, when professional teams didn't go on overseas tours in exchange for tickets, the big draw of preseason training was the summer tournaments. The Gamper or Teresa Herrera, who now have a residual significance, were unmissable events; also the Ramón de Carranza in Cádiz, considered the Champions League of the dog days, which took place at the end of August and marked the start of the season.

Japanese Taito Suzuki, president and majority shareholder of Sant Andreu, is one of the few foreigners in the stands at the Narcís Sala this Sunday. Now that another edition of the Barcelona derby Sant Andreu - Europa has ended, and regardless of whether the crowd was more local or foreign, almost every one of the 6,500 people who filled the stadium had a reason to have a glass of cava after a 1-1 draw that satisfies both teams because it leaves everything open despite keeping Europa at the top of Group 3 of the Second Division RFEF. This intimate and intense bond between the stands and their teams contrasts with what was experienced in another derby played today in Barcelona, Barça-Girona, witnessed in Montjuïc by thousands of tourists who don't care about the result and who cool down the atmosphere of a stadium at the same speed that they help make money in the modern football that they hate so much in Sant Andreu and Gràcia.

"Official statement: Announcement of the sale of Terrassa FC. The price of the entire shareholding has been set at 1.75 million euros." This statement published by Terrassa FC serves to explain the reality of most professional and semi-professional football clubs in Catalonia: historic entities that were once led by local businessmen, but which in recent years have been forced to sell off, mainly for economic reasons. The rescue has almost always been provided by foreign owners with sufficient capital to buy, but they have not always had the management capacity to refloat them and lead them to a higher level.