The Pride of Vallekas

If you remember, I recently wrote an article on Juan Quero - a former Rayo player and current Fuenlabrada player. But he is also a globetrotter, or trotamundos  as the Spanish say, having played in Malta, Thailand, India, the UAE and Bolivia. Since Juan Quero played for Chonburi FC, the English-language website dedicated to the Thai club got in touch with me to ask a few questions about this blog, and my thoughts on Juan Quero. This is the first time I've been interviewed, but I thoroughly enjoyed it....and I hope you enjoy it too! You can find it here .

When I sent Elizabeth the questions via email, she responded: "Good grief. Are you doing a PhD in Rayo fans?" Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new subtitle of the Rayo aficionado project. She is @LizzieCarrEllis on Twitter - give her a follow! A bit about yourself and your background I’m a journalist living and working in south-east England, but I’m originally from Newcastle. I lived eight years in Scotland, where I supported Hibs (Hibernian), and then eight years in Madrid. How long have you been a fan of Rayo and what made you support them in the first place? I thought I’d be an Atléti fan at first but they never grabbed me. My husband was reading up about Rayo and we both really liked the ethos: anti-fascista, etc. and the strong sense of community. Plus the tickets were affordable - and you could get them - and one day we just really wanted to see a live football game so we went, we won and that was it. Describe your first visit ever to Vallecas and the sta...

Given that Adrián Embarba just reached 100 appearances for Rayo, here is his story - some shared on this blog before, some not... Football is cruel. Hype is often wrong. And history forgets quickly. It's easy to forget that Embarba was the least heralded of three signings for Rayo B in 2013. Miki Ruiz was a striker heralded for his pace and strength, his finishing and his shot power. He was from Córdoba, he was ex-FC Barcelona, ex-Real Madrid, ex-Valencia and ex-Hércules, and he had already played for the U-20 Spain team, alongside Jesé Rodríguez and Derik Osede. He, at just 19, had a bright future ahead of him. So did Sergio Parla, ex-Getafe, ex-Real Madrid and ex-Alcobendas. The 21 year old center-back, whose ball-playing skills and pace made him a perfect Rayo defender. His future was bright too - sharing hydrotherapy pools with Ronaldo and, despite a torrid time with Alcobedas, his ability meant regular appearances for the first team. Embarba? Released by Real Madrid,...

Jordi Agusti, 34, is the Chief Operations Officer of a shop displays company. You can follow him on Twitter: @Totocompos He also recommends the Twitter account of Penya Jandrista - @losjandristas - as a great place to follow the club's day to day workings. How long have you been a fan of Girona and what made you support them in the first place? I've been a Girona fan since I was about 10 years ago, I started to support Girona because it is the team of our province and at that moment the team was playing in the Segunda B with the possibility to go to the 2nd division. Also in that moment it was one of my friends playing in the team (Albert Dorca, now playing at Alcorcón) Describe your first experience of watching Girona play? I don't remember the first experience but I remember the first season Girona played in the 2nd division because they played against some first division teams I used to watch on TV (Zaragoza, Rayo, Tenerife, Real Sociedad, Celta) and at that ...

Not so long ago, Spanish politics was a two-party system. The conservative center-right People's Party (Partido Popular or PP) and the center-left Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español or PSOE). There are regional parties that also play an important role, but let's just focus on the first two. After the 15-M movement (15th May, 2011), which was an anti-austerity movement which shook Spain to its very core, two more parties came to prominence. One was a left-wing, anti-austerity, populist party called Podemos led by Pablo Iglesias, a professor; the other was a centrist party called Citizens (Ciudadanos), a Catalan party that opposes Catalan nationalism and is led by Albert Rivera. The December 2015 national elections ended the two-party system - PP, PSOE, Podemos and C's got 123, 90, 69 and 40 seats respectively, and with 176 seats needed to form a government predictably nothing happened. A June 2016 election did little to resolve the...

So as it turns out, I made a mistake. A few days ago, I talked about the Rayo squad, and as it turns out things are even worse - Zé Castro, who had reportedly rescinded his contract, had actually done so with no announcements being made. Because this is the Rayo website: Credit: rayovallecano.es I didn't even get to say goodbye! So here it is...a tribute to Zé Castro. August 29th, 2013. Leave it to Rayo to scramble at the last minute and make an amazing, seemingly impossible signing. This time, they made two. Zé Castro, and Seba Fernández half an hour later, were the two gems that had been picked up. Castro was a "boring" signing - he had played for Atlético de Madrid but was more of a backup. And at Depor, Zé Castro appeared in only ten games in 2009–10, and featured even less in the following season, prompting him to request a move in mid-November 2010. Some people even disliked him - in March 2011, he was to be picked as a last-minute substitut...

"I have only good words for the Bukaneros, I have been in Vallecas with so many different people (friends, family, coworkers...) and all of them were amazed by the way the Bukaneros transmit their support both the team and the rest of the crowd. They are the real supporters, they are always singing and cheering. It doesn't matter if the team is winning or losing.... Also, it's incredible how they support all the categories, you can go to a game from Rayo’s female team and they will be there with you, the same with the youth teams, if the alevín (10 and 11 years old kids) are playing a tournament, the Bukaneros will be there supporting - it's really amazing how they live and breathe Rayo Vallecano. The Bukaneros are not only a hooligan group, they fight for something, they are committed with a lot of social actions and they have all my respect. Life is not just about football." That was an interview with Daniel Kobe in yesterday's piece (read it here ) as p...

I had something else to write for today, but I decided to shelve it for another day. Because yesterday marked 150 days since I started daily blogging. Today is 151. 150 days ago, things were very, very different... 16th February, 2017.  My palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.  My brow is tense, my hand is anything but steady.  My head is spinning, the decision that I'm making  i s major, is intense, is everything, is all or nothing. Excuses come in - where will I find the time? Will I ever get drained and pained by this uphill climb? What may I find, how will I keep up the grind? Will anyone even listen to what I have in my mind? My head, filled with dread, tried to look ahead Tried to see that some stories just deserved to be read That other people would read what I had to say As long as I said it, and just started it today No delaying and stalling and dallying was gonna work I had to start today and hopefully someday see the per...

What makes modern football so beautiful is that some - few, but some - players love the game, or love a particular club, and stay for a reason other than the paycheck - like Javi Fuego rejecting a 800,000 euro move to Club Brugge in January 2012 because he loved playing at a club that couldn't even pay its players. In a dizzying array of red and white, spurred by the battle cries and fervent arm movements of Pepe Mel, a 45 year old bespectacled former striker, newly-promoted Rayo Vallecano were punching well above their weight. The club that was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, that couldn't pay its players and whose fan base actively hated the owners had a men's team that had just been promoted from the semi-professional third tier and was outside the top ten for just two jornadas, and a women's team that was winning the league. In the 2008-09 season, at the Campo de Fútbol de Vallecas, there was a team, plucky, beautiful, and aggressive. And it was win...

Yesterday, I talked about Granada taking Rayo players away, but I actually didn't mention one of Granada's biggest signings from the club - Paco Jémez. So here it is. Paco refused to hear the scores when Rayo were 1-0 down. Nor when Rayo were 2-0 down. Nor when Rayo were 2-1 down. He turned to his bench, to the coaches who had supported him all season when criticism was at its zenith, to the coaches who had seen their players pull out for the season one by one, to the coaches who couldn’t hide their emotions as they responded. Granada? Safe. Getafe-Sporting? Draw. His head hung low, his eyes lost - searching for reason in a season that has been unreasonable to Rayo - his mind made up: "We are dead". We were dead. There was no hope - Sporting were playing Villarreal, who were coached by a Sporting fan, and Getafe were playing Betis, a team whose fan base has been friendly to Sporting for years. Out of Getafe, Rayo and Sporting, only Sporting were goi...

They called him el ultrahéroe de Vallecas at Rayo. In hell, he was their ray of hope. Born in Madrid, Pachón started his career in the fifth division of Spanish football, playing for Rayo Alúa in the 1995-96 season. He went on to play for Parla in the Tercera for the following two season, and was signed by Segunda club Leganés. After helping the club retain their division two status, in 2000 he moved to La Liga outfit Real Valladolid. He would go on to play 31 games in his first year and 24 in the 2002–03 campaign, but only seven in the other two seasons combined. Failing to make an impact, he was released in January 2004 and moved to Segunda outfit Getafe, proving an essential offensive unit in the club's first ever promotion to the top division - on 19 June, he scored all five goals in the decisive 5–3 away win against Tenerife. He was mainly used as a substitute in the following three seasons and also helping the side to the 2007 final of the Copa del Rey. Immed...

My new series,  called the Silly Season Accumulator, lists all the rumors that have ever been mentioned on the internet about Rayo. Yes - all of them. Just to show you how ridiculous this machine is - a machine that creates meaningless content masquerading as journalism. If that's harsh, that's because the irony is that more rumors gives me more material. And that material gets in the way of the stories that matter. Here's all the rumors for this week. It's less this time, because the actual news took precedent: Baena has reportedly accepted a better offer from Osasuna over Rayo. Manucho has rejected the first offer on the table but the desire to renew is still there. Dorado's renewal is all but closed - an official announcement is imminent. Huesca striker Borja Lázaro is reportedly linked to a move to Rayo. He has a contract till 2019, but José Luis Ortas, Huesca's general director, has said there are no offers on the table. Paulo Gazzaniga has been ...

Miguel Bastón was a goalkeeper who played for Atlético - but only with its reserves - and spent most of his career with Real Burgos CF. His dream of playing for the first team of the club that he graduated from never materialized. Born in Madrid, Borja arrived in his hometown club Atlético Madrid's youth system at the age of four. He began as a goalkeeper, the position which his father played professionally, but he converted him to a forward so that he could enjoy the game more. He made his senior debuts in the 2009–10 season, scoring 12 goals for the reserve team in the third division. On 15 May 2010, in the campaign's last round, Borja made his first-team and La Liga debut, coming on as a substitute for Tiago in the 58th minute of the game against Getafe CF. He had fulfilled his father's dream. That dream, however, faded quickly. Twenty minutes later, he was stretchered off with a serious anterior cruciate ligament injury on his left knee, in an eventual...

There are many midfielders known for their ability to "clean up the mess", to defend with both heart and mind. There are many midfielders known for their ability to distribute the ball with authority, to create chances with ease, to keep the team ticking, to control the tempo and flow of the game. There aren't many midfielders known for doing both. Gerhard Poschner was one of them. Poschner was born in Dumitra, Romania - a country from which in 1974, at the age of five, his family fled to escape the communist regime and moved abroad to Bietigheim-Bissingen, West Germany. Poschner started playing football at the age of nine with SpVgg Bissingen. At 13, VfB Stuttgart spotted him playing at a talent scouting event organised by the Württemberg Football Association, and e began his professional career in 1987–88 with the club. He played three seasons with little impact in the first team (an average of 15 Bundesliga appearances) due to intense competition in his position. ...

In February 2009, de la Vega was arrested in connection with an anti-drug operation in the Spanish capital. After eight days, he paid €30.000 in order to be released from custody. Former footballers Predrag Stanković and Txutxi were also involved in the plot, among others. In 2014 (confirmation in 2015) de la Vega was one of two persons acquitted, as five other people received sentences that ranged from four to 12 years. Predrag and Txutxi were condemned to nine years in 2014 (confirmation in 2015) for smuggling 950 kg of cocaine into the country. After emerging through Rayo Vallecano's youth system, right-back Carlos de la Vega went on to play with amateur sides Alcalá and Alcorcón, also from his hometown of Madrid, until well into his 20's. He did not have his first taste of full professional football until the 2008–09 season (he had only played one match with Rayo's first team in 2002–03's La Liga, two minutes) when, after returning to Rayo in the previous ye...

Salamanca traveled to Albacete to compete for promotion to La Liga with an impossible task on their hands. They had to overturn a 2-0 deficit away from home, against a side that entered La Liga's relegation playoff spots on the final day, and who had scored 44 goals in the league - just four less than Salamanca themselves. As the clock ticked towards the 90th minute, Salamanca were winning 1-0 yet in danger of losing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Born in Tudela, Navarre, Urzaiz began his professional career at Real Madrid's B-side, making his debut in Segunda División in 1989. Despite being a successful youth international, he did not make any La Liga appearances for the first team (however, he did play one game against Odense BK, in the 1990–91 European Cup). Urzaiz spent the 1991–92 season on loan at Albacete Balompié, making his top flight debut when he came on as a substitute against Athletic Bilbao in October 1991. In early 1993, he was loaned to Celta de Vigo...

Today's article is all about players who moved in 2015. Asunción-based club Cerro Porteño shockingly released legendary Spanish goalscorer Daniel Güiza, who was the Pichichi winner in 2008 playing for seventh place Mallorca – ahead of the likes of Luís Fabiano, Sergio Agüero, Raúl, David Villa, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Diego Forlán, Frédéric Kanouté and Samuel Eto’o. He was instrumental in Spain’s Euro 2008 win too. In 2015, the then 35-year-old, signed for third-tier Andalusia-based Cádiz. Whose fans were irritated by his origin from fierce rivals Xerez, and by his commitment made ten years ago to never play for – you guessed it – Cádiz. And yet, less than a year later, it was Güiza who scored the only goal at Hércules in the second leg of the play-off finals (2–0 on aggregate), helping the club return to the second division after six years. Look at Asturian player Miguel Marcos Madera aka “Míchel”. In January 2010 he was a Sporting Gijón legend, joined Birmingham and was ...

In 2000, as Atlético struggled to assemble a squad, a package deal of three Rayo players was arranged against their will. I wrote a piece for Into the Calderon about the story - you can read it here . Follow @Vallecanos1924

In 2007 he won the Segunda title with Valladolid. In 2008 he won the Segunda title with Numancia. In 2010 he was this close to seeing Cartagena promoted and was in the top 3 for the Pichichi trophy. In 2014 he helped Deportivo secure promotion to La Liga. José Verdú Nicolás, or Toché, is 33 years old and is a specialist at getting promoted. At jumping up a level. At rising above the defence and scoring. At rising above the shadows. A former Atlético graduate, he has Champions League and Europa League experience with Panathinaikos. And now, he is at Real Oviedo. The club that just got promoted and wants to get promoted again. A powerful header, a knack of rising above a defense and an uncanny ability to score goals, Toché has scored nine times in eighteen games and will surely try to find the back of the net again. But what goes under the radar when it comes to Toché is his technical ability. In Oviedo’s attacking, one-touch system, he scores one-touch goals like these . He d...

Yesterday, I wrote an article about Carlos Aranda, who holds the record for playing in La Liga for the most number of clubs - eight. If you consider just playing for a La Liga club, not actually playing in La Liga with them, that figure becomes nine. But I dug deeper, and found out that if you look at professional clubs (La Liga and Segunda), Carlos Aranda holds that record jointly with Moisés García - an astonishing 12 clubs.  Obviously, only if you use the second metric - by the first metric  Moisés García is top with 12 and Aranda comes joint second with 11 with a couple of other players. That record will be broken soon though - there are quite a few players who are at 11, and they still have a couple of seasons in the tank. So today, I look at a player whose records are unlikely to be broken anytime soon - Elche's Nino.  Even his name has the word modest in it. Juan Francisco Martínez Modesto, aka Nino, was born in Vera, Almería, and first appeared p...