Rayo Vallecano aim for Europe while bemoaning manic Mondays
With a squad in constant flux, doubts about their ground and bizarre kick-off times, it's a wonder Rayo are playing so well
New season, new enthusiasm, new hopes … an empty stand? Down in the Independent Republic of Vallecas, the protests started on the very first day. Rayo Vallecano emerged from the tunnel and into the silence. At one end of the stadium, a wall; at the other, the end that actually is an end, concrete steps and plastic seats with no one on them. Soon, a handful of fans occupied the open space holding banners directed at the vice-president of the league, Javier Tebas. "If football belongs to Tebas, let his f**king mother cheer them on," it ran.
Another declared: "For working, for looking for work, for studying, for getting rid of your hangover … Mondays are good for many things, but not for football." Cramped into the corner, the fans who had evacuated the end brandished a tarpaulin with the slogan: "For dignified timetables." And along the bottom of the empty section behind the goal, a clear message: "No to football on Mondays." Both of them are still there. They've been joined periodically by others: before their final game of 2012 there was a colossal a work of art, depicting a dominatrix whipping Rayo's servile president and ordering him to play on the days that she says.
It wasn't actually a Monday – Rayo's first game of the season was held on a Sunday night at 9.30pm, while the following week they played at noon – but the protest was for everyone's sake and it soon would be Mondays. "Mondays are killing us," complained the coach, Paco Jémez. The good news is that so far he has been proven wrong; Rayo are very much alive.
It is not just Mondays, it is Fridays too. This season, the league has used 14 different time slots, from midday to 11pm and the "weekend" games are spread across four days. There is one game on Friday, one on Monday and the rest on Saturday and Sunday. That is not necessarily in itself a problem – plenty of leagues have Friday or Monday slots – and it could even be seen as a good thing: the week's one free-to-air game is on Monday or Friday, so if you occupy that slot at least you get seen.
Only you don't, not really. The free-to-air game is being moved by channel and by day and squeezed (there have even been a handful of Saturday games). It is part of a barely concealed but never admitted plan to undermine the concept of "general interest", currently enshrined in law, and push instead for every game to be on subscription channels: viewing figures have tumbled from last year's regular Saturday night slot, which often included the league's best game, thus providing the perfect excuse to take that game off terrestrial TV.
Because kick-off dates and times are not confirmed until around three weeks to a fortnight before – and that's an improvement – fans have to wait. And hope. This Friday, Rayo's Bukaneros fans club was unable to travel to Bilbao. Then there are the forgotten victims of Spain's failure to fix match days well in advance: the teams themselves, the coaches who prepare for a game not knowing when it is and how many days' training they have.
When they get Monday or Friday, there is also something intangible about it that says: you don't matter. Out on a limb, in a kind of limbo, it is as if the games don't really form part of the weekend. Especially if you play on a Monday, especially if the free-to-air game was Friday: the round-up shows have been and gone, the wraps, the columns*. And you're not there. They're not going to wait for you. Certainly not if it's you. And all too often it is.
Madrid and Barcelona have not been on a single free-to-air game this season. None of the European teams have. Meanwhile, Rayo have been forced to play on Friday or a Monday more times than anyone else; given the slot no one wants. They had a run of Thursday, Monday, Monday, Friday, Monday. And of their past nine games, fewer than half have been played on a Saturday or Sunday. Of those, only even carried the consolation of being free-to-air on telly. "We may be humble but we're not idiots," said Jémez.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/jan/14/rayo-vallecano-la-liga-monday-fixtures
