Villarreal president, Fernando Roig, and the Yellow Submarine’s extraordinary journey
Alamy
Roig is the billionaire owner of a supermarket chain and ceramics company. He attributes Villarreal’s achievements to youth policy, investment in infrastructure and community engagement.
Villarreal's Europa League winning manager Unai Emery this week resisted overtures from Saudi-backed Newcastle for their vacant manager's job.
The industrialist bought then Spanish minnows for €432,000 in 1997. The club, which won the 2021 Europa League and has qualified for Europe on 14 occcasions, now valued at €300 million.
“We put into practise everything we say public. That's part of the secret to Villarreal.”
4 November 2021 - 2:57 PM
The Villarreal President, Fernando Roig Alfonso, beams through his web camera, hair slicked back, top button undone, every inch the archetype of a bygone era of football club owners.
Here is a local industrialist made good, now in his 25th season of owing his local club, having decided in the mid-1990s that he wanted to put something back into his local community.
It has been some journey for the so-called Yellow Submarine: from perennial lower league minnows to Europa Lea
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