Last Sunday, May 21, Thousands of English fans and 250 Spanish fans shared one of the most anticipated moments in British football at Wembley: Sunderland’s promotion to the Championships after 4 years of ostracism in League One.
The famous Netflix documentary “Sunderland ‘Til I Die” made many people from all over the world outside the north of England have joined the interest to see the Black Cats move up divisions within the English football organization chart.
Beyond the match (the final ended with a well-deserved 2-0 against Wycombe Wanderers, a small club from the town of High Wycombe, near London), the ability of a modest club like Wycombe Wanderers to awaken the extraordinary and unusual mobilization of those 250 fans who came from all over Spain and part of Latin Americawith the sole intention of supporting the defeated team.
The English press itself echoed the landing of these “foreign” enthusiasts delivered from 11am in the Wycombe fanzoneas if it were the final of a World Cup, singing tirelessly both outside and inside the stadium, oblivious to a torrid sun, more Spanish than British, and celebrating the football festival, even despite the defeat of his team, because what they went to look for there was the emotion of sport, the desire to share the deeds of that small team that for some strange reason has won their hearts. “How not to love this club“ prayed on all of their special edition t-shirts.
Of course, the questions we ask ourselves are obvious: Why such an unknown team can generate such a level of adhesion outside its country? Who is responsible for this mysterious mobilization?
And the answer is found in one of the most important YouTube channels on English football for Spanish speakers: The English Mean, which is an International Media Partner of the club. For that reason we have spoken with its founder, Ilie Oleart to tell us how they have worked the miracle of arousing such extraordinary interest from Spanish fans and mobilizing them so that for a few hours, the unknown Wycombe Wanderers be that team of your lives.
Wycombe Wembley Stand
The English Mean
Let’s go to the beginning: how did the project of La Media Inglesa start?
The project started in 2010, I came from working five years in soccer in Mexico and wanted to start a journalistic project. I went to the FIFA World Cup in South Africa and realized that there was a global passion for english football. I met fans from all over the world and the common theme was a general passion for British football.
I thought it was a good idea to focus the project on the english football for spanish speakers. Thus, in 2011 we launched the website, also the podcast and finally we started to publish videos. The origins were very homemade. I started with my little brother and really from scratch. I had never worked as a journalist, nobody knew me and It was a project that came practically out of nowhere..
What is the current status of the La Media Inglesa project?
At the moment we are a multiplatform projectwe have parked the podcast, which we had to give up due to lack of resources, and now we maintain the website that has undergone changes over the years. We are mostly in Youtubethe platform that allows us to be financially sustainable, above all thanks to memberships.
This summer we will start doing direct also in Twitter to continue with the growth of the channel. Of course we are also generating content on the rest of the main social media platforms.
The essential thing is to keep a constant dialogue with our community, always oriented to English football. Right now we are seven people, we maintain a sustainable project, modest but independent and free. We hope to continue growing.
What are the long-term goals of La Media Inglesa for the future?
We have several goals. Of course we as a project we have always placed the community at the center, so one of the priority objectives is to continue strengthening the relationship with her. Actually, our ultimate goal is to make people happy, to help them improve their lives through entertainment.
To achieve this, it is also important support us in communicative innovation. We aspire to innovate both from a technical and journalistic point of view, so we are betting on a very strong branch of research And in that sense, the World Cup in Qatar is going to be a very important turning point. We are also preparing a lot of research content, without losing sight of the fact that we must exercise that role of controller that journalists should play in a healthy society.
Finally there is a project in the medium and long term, the purchase of an English club among the entire community, with the aim, not just to entertain ourselves, but to put into practice the social positioning that we proclaim for football clubs. We understand that these must become a basic pillar of any society and community, should help bring people togetherhence the challenge of buying that English club, from lower divisions, of course (5th or 6th division.)
We therefore aspire to achieve sporting success through a different patha path open to the opinions of the fans, based on very firm values and backed by a management concept that is very different from the one that governs most clubs today.
How did the union with Wycombe Wanderers and La Media Inglesa come about?
actually everything it started by chance. Many people told us that they had become fans of English football because of us, but they did not know which team to support. In this way we came up with, instead of telling them which club to support, ask all clubs, 92 of the EFLto give us a reason for the community to support them.
We got thirteen responses of the 92 emails sent, several of the Premier League although with quite automated responses from customer service. From other more modest clubs, such as Tranmere Rovers, the owner herself answered us and, finally, Wycombe Wanderers was the only club that responded to us in Spanish. The new owners were Americans, they spoke a little Spanish and that’s how they answered us.
Later we published the video for the community with the answers and we also sent the video to the clubs that responded to us. after this video, the Wycombe was amazed at the impact it had. In this way they invited us to go to their stadium and we went to an FA Cup match Nacho González and I against Tranmere Rovers precisely.
Since that day we have been captivated by the club for its values, a family-owned club in a relatively small, working-class town on the outskirts of London, to some extent somewhat forgotten. It was also a club with a very peculiar coach who has been in charge for more than ten years, a healthy anomaly in these times. Of course they also had a figure that even transcended the club itself, such as the recently retired player Adebayo Akinfenwa.
All these factors made will connect a lot with us and with the community. From there we follow the club’s news more closely and always with great repercussion. In this way we strengthened the relationship until in 2021 they proposed us to be an international media partner.
How did the possibility of taking 250 people to the Wembley final come about?
One of the things we wanted to do especially on the channel was bring the passion for English football closer to the people. We always wanted to do trips with the community so that they could feel that passion of the English fans from within.
We had already organized several trips: to see a West Ham vs Newcastle, another to Manchester to see a Sheffield United vs Brighton, which is important because we are interested in teaching and that people know this type of more humble stadiums.
With the pandemic over, it occurred to us that the party of Wycombe Wanderers v Sheffield Wednesday it was the perfect opportunity as it was a decider for Wycombe and also Adebayo’s last home game. In this way what we did was set up the Wycombe day where we could be in some tents on the outskirts of the field and we got space for 100 people who all traveled on their own to Addams Park.
It was a very positive experience both for us, for the community and for the club itself, which was astonishing for the exemplary behavior of the fiery Spanish fans. They once qualified for the League One playoff final we contacted them to travel to Wembley and they quickly provided us with 200 tickets in the central entertainment area. These tickets sold out in less than 48 hours and we were able to get another 50 that sold out again. That was how we lived an incredible day at Wembley. we finally saw the rise of a historic like Sunderland who deserved to win the match without any doubt. It was a very intense and very special day for everyone. Let’s hope this story continues and we get back there as soon as possible.