Gerard Pique may be entering the twilight of his playing days at Barcelona, but his career as a club owner is really starting to take off.
FC Andorra were bought by Pique’s Kosmos Holdings in 2019 as a fifth-tier club. Nearly four years later, they are in the second tier of Spanish football, La Liga 2.
After eight games they have 14 points and sit in sixth place, a play-off spot. Early days, but an extraordinary fourth promotion in five seasons – and a meeting with Pique’s Barcelona – is not off the cards.
We are very happy and excited by how we have performed in the last few years, it has been an astonishing accomplishment,” Villaseca, speaking at the World Football Summit in Seville, tells BBC Sport.
“We have realised part of our dream, we have a very strong sporting department – we now need to have that in the youth teams, and the club itself, the club structure.”
FC Andorra were founded in 1942 and joined the Spanish league system six years later, but had never played above the third tier until 2022-23.
Until December 2018, the club were drifting in the regional leagues. Then Kosmos took over, inspiring an immediate upturn in form. Andorra won the fifth-tier First Catalan Division in 2018-19 on the final day.
This was when their rich new owners really started to pay off. A spot in the third-tier Segunda B opened up as CF Reus Deportiu were relegated amid financial problems.
Andorra were able to pay to take Reus’ club licence for nearly half a million Euros, assuming their place in the Spanish league pyramid and securing a highly unusual double promotion.
“We have also had some luck,” admits Villaseca. “We pursued our luck, we were always aiming to be lucky
The speed of Andorra’s rise has left Villaseca scrambling to ensure their infrastructure can keep pace with the on-pitch performance.
The most glaring example is the Estadi Nacional ground they share with Andorra’s national football team. It has a capacity of 3,306 – smaller than all but one in the third tier of Spanish football, let alone the second.
A new 6,000-capacity, €26 million stadium is in the pipeline, but Villaseca has also been hard at work growing the club behind the scenes.
“We have to grow in human resources,” he says. “We focused on sporting talent, now we are making acquisitions in the administrative departments. A new marketing director, commercial director, a financial director.
“The club was in the fifth tier, and was like that at all levels – we only had three people. So we need to grow in that direction, and in the infrastructure – we need to build our own training facilities.
“As Andorra, we don’t have much – we are not a powerhouse, we are a small village in the middle of the mountains so we have to offer something different. We need to offer players the best quality of sporting living, that is very important.
“We now have one of the best playing pitches in Spain – a hybrid of turf and artificial, it’s heated which none of the other clubs in the second tier have – but the training facilities are all artificial, and he [sporting director Jaume Nogues] said: ‘I cannot offer that, we need quality training facilities or no-one will be willing to join’.
“We need to make the club a second division club, and in some places we are still far away. It takes time – we have grown too fast!”
Source.bbc
