News
MAR 13.12.2016
“It’s not easy for us. We’re peculiar,” club president Manel del Olmo told www.laliga.es. “We have 35 members spread around 13 different towns, so we try and meet up on tour every month. We’ve members spread around London, but also in Wycombe, Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham, Manchester and Southampton, for example. At the last count we were 17 Spaniards, 16 British, one Australian and a Bulgarian. We’re very cosmopolitan!” He went to add: “There’s a great deal of interest in LaLiga in England. I think people are a little envious of the way the teams play.”
Del Olmo has been a fan of Espanyol since he was five, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather to support his local club in Barcelona. He had been a season-ticket holder for 37 years and so after moving to England in 2012, he decided to set up a ‘peña’. Their members have many and varied reasons for supporting ‘Los Pericos.’ “We have a family who are members,” he said. “The youngest son is a big football fan who likes Everton FC. When the family went on holiday to Barcelona they saw Espanyol, who wore blue like Everton, and who have not won many titles, in a city with a big neighbour. You can see the similarities! The father became involved and encouraged it, and now they are all members. A group of us travelled to Liverpool to see Everton v Espanyol in a pre-season friendly, when we spoke to the club and put the wheels in motion, and finally we had our official inauguration on October 30.”
Espanyol have enjoyed an impressive run of form in recent weeks going nine games unbeaten in LaLiga, while keeping seven clean sheets. That form has given the Espanyol peña high hopes for the future. “We seem to have a proper plan,” Del Olmo said “We have the right manager in my opinion in Quique Sanchez Flores. He’s looking to change the mentality of the supporters. We have brought in players like Jose Antonio Reyes, Jurado, Leo Baptistao and Diego Lopez in goal. We’ve progressed. We haven’t had a team as good as this since the one under Ernesto Valverde, which reached the UEFA Cup final in 2007. I would say we’re aiming for between a fifth and eighth-place finish in LaLiga. If we can do that, we’ll have a good base for the following season.”
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