BarcelonaThe death of CF Reus Deportiu seems like that novel by Agatha Christie where you look for who the killer is and you end up discovering that he was killed by everyone. Four years ago, in 2018, the red-and-black club was expelled from professional football amid a media circus whose secrets are not yet known. “A judicial journey began that took the Reus club to liquidation in 2021. We wanted to explain what happened,” says Andreu Rauet, one of the three students at Rovira i Virgili University who have made a documentary talking about almost all the protagonists. Everyone who wanted to talk, of course. Adrià Tella, Andreu Rauet and Víctor Gómez, the creators of the documentary The CF Reus case, looking for culprits, have investigated all branches of a very complex case, without wanting to take sides. “The idea was to claim the club’s legacy. He died and there was little talk about it, he knows very seriously. I understand that many people will have a partisan view of things, especially when people linked to Barça appear, but “In fact, the main culprit should be the owner, Joan Oliver, but it’s a death with many participants, starting with the city and the fans, like myself,” admits Rauet.
What was supposed to be an end-of-year project has ended up being a long-running documentary to which they have devoted a lot of hours, trying to provide details on aspects such as the alleged involvement of Joan Laporta and his circle in the management of Reus , Joan Oliver’s business in China, frustrated attempts to sell the club and the role of Javier Tebas and the League. The diagnosis is clear: “They all killed Reus.” According to Rauet, “it seems normal for a club to disappear, but it shouldn’t be.” Rauet, a fan of the club, admits that “when Oliver arrived, he was given control of the club. Reus had already seen the bankruptcy of a former sports corporation, but no one asked questions at the time. We are a city where hockey is very important “, recalls the week in which Reus eliminated Barça in the semifinals of the league of this sport. “And where everyone goes their own way. In football, no one was rowing in the same direction, not the fans, not the town hall, not a property that disconnected enough from the social masses,” he added.
The first years of euphoria
Reus, the historic club of Catalan football, had to transform itself into a sports limited company after being promoted to Second B in 2011. President Xavier Llastarri had found himself in a worrying situation when he arrived at the club, which had many debts . An investor was needed. It would be Ferran Pujol, an acquaintance who worked in the purchase and sale of clubs, who would come into contact with Joan Oliver, who in 2013 bought 90% of the shares of Reus. Oliver, director of Televisió de Catalunya from 2002 to 2004 and general manager of Barça during Laporta’s first years at the Barça club, takes advantage of his relationship with the representative of the Portuguese player Jorge Mendes to bring players to the city of Baix Camp. Initially, everything went well and Reus managed to go up for the first time in 2016. “Sports management has always been very good, something different is the economic one,” explains Rauet. Now, in the same year of the promotion to Second, some salaries were no longer paid on time. Reus rose to second place for the first time by defeating Racing de Santander and playing good football with low budgets. It was a small miracle with muddy feet, too fragile.
According to Ferran Pujol, one of the problems was the lack of support from the city, with a city council that contributed little money and a small social mass. “You couldn’t fight an Oviedo or a Las Palmas. The field was small and not crowded. We had a small budget. It didn’t stretch the arm more than the sleeve.” Pujol would be the club’s first manager. Then came Joan Sentelles, who had worked with Oliver at Barça coordinating activities at the Camp Nou. Sentelles, by the way, has returned to the Barça club with Laporta as director of operations and purchasing a few months ago. Pujol states that Reus was managed prudently in the economic field, but journalists and ex-workers of the club during that time doubt the experience of people like Sentelles and see it differently: “Luxury vans were rented asking to always have a driver , good dinners … Maybe because they came from Barça they saw it differently “, an ex-worker explains in the documentary. According to journalist Esteve Giralt, “the big culprit was Oliver, but he was not alone. People on Joan Laporta’s ropes were there, though not publicly. There was always talk of Laporta or Rafa Yuste,” the club’s current sporting vice-president. Laporta has often denied having any relationship with Reus, where he briefly played his son. The coach of those years, Xavi Bartolo, remembers how “Rafa Yuste appeared around the stadium; it has nothing to do with it, but he was there”. In fact, 57% of the club was owned by a company, Core Store, Oliver, Laporta, Xavier Sala and Martin i Yuste. “Oliver appeared once every 15 days in Reus,” recalls Rauet, who points out that good sports management did not go in the same direction as economic management, with a club in the hands of a circle of confidence that Oliver did not go creating complicity with a city “that did not live up to it,” according to Rauet.
In the summer of 2018, after a few years in which Reus played well and won derbies at Nàstic in the Second Division, something started to go wrong. He had to leave for the pre-season in the Pyrenees, but three days earlier it was announced that it could not be for lack of money. And the League refused to register players to make their debut at the Las Palmas field for not respecting the salary cap. “When they started to run out of money, Laporta helped Oliver find someone to sell Reus to,” says David Peña, a lawyer who would work with Clifton Onolfo, the American who ended up buying the club last. months of life. Oliver had been betting on the Chinese market to find income by investing in a club in that country, but with the bad luck that the Chinese government changed the legislation just at that time and this prevented him from being able to receive profits.
Former Reus City Council sports councilors Jordi Cervera and Sebastià Domènech criticize the “authoritarian” nature of Oliver, who, after closing the Chinese door, negotiated with Arab businessmen in operations that fell at the last minute. Jorge Mendes was also spoken to again. And Laporta came in contact with Oliver Peter Lim, the current owner of Valencia, as admitted by the Barça president in an interview in 2021. The City Council had turned its back on the club and Oliver was looking to sell it without lose money. “Laporta has always denied having a relationship with Reus, although it can be shown that he was involved in companies that were in the club. He has publicly admitted that he helped Oliver try to find a buyer for the club,” said Rauet. Reus started playing in the 2018-19 season with few players, in a climate of tension that led President Xavier Llastarri to resign. Oliver wanted to sell the club to someone who took on the debts and couldn’t find it.
The paper of Thebes
With salaries to pay, the Professional Football League put Reus in the spotlight. “Tebas was going against Reus, he had even fined the club for showing a flag. Tebas was disgusted, either because of politics, because Reus had Catalanist owners, or whatever,” says Ferran Pujol. “Tebas was inflexible, it was good for him to bring down the club,” admits Giralt. “The league never wanted to help, on the contrary,” Pujol added. Oliver was looking for solutions. “The league did not allow us anything. Cadiz came to offer us players on loan at zero cost and the league did not allow it. Another club would have allowed it,” admits Xavi Bartolo. Thebes’ relationship with Oliver and Laporta’s environment was bad at the time. For politics and for different views of football.
In the end, when everything seemed lost, a new buyer arrived, the American Onolfo, who bought Reus for 3 euros but kept all the debt. According to the directors of the documentary, what seemed like salvation was a dark operation, as Onolfo had business in common with Oliver, Laporta and Yuste in China. More than a savior, Onolfo was a partner to continue commanding Reus showing that everything had changed. In fact, they had all shared shares in Bit FC, the Chinese club where Reus had invested. “The end was very sad, with Onolfo appearing in the morning dressed in any way, making fun of him saying he wanted to make a stadium of 20,000 spectators style Gaudinian, showing on the phone the picture of a figure he claimed to have at the bank but without paying for hotel nights. The Reus cups came to an end, “Rauet complains.” With Oliver you saw that things were not going well, but he was a serious man. Then it was ridiculous. Onolfo gave me a paper saying that I had to give up the money I owed “, adds Bartolo. That is to say, he lived on the edge, improvising. Initially it went well. In the end, no. “Oliver, Tebas, Laporta, the city … among all of them, Reus died,” said the modest club with Catalanist managers. Rauet, satisfied with the reception of the documentary but sad for not being able to follow the results of his club every Sunday.
