‘I suffer a lot’: Villarreal owner braced for tense Anfield test

VILLARREAL CF Fernando Roig with the 

2021 Europa League trophy at Estadio de la Cerámica

Europe’s longest-serving president Fernando Roig on how far club have come since he rescued them 29 years ago

‘We can’t compete economically with the biggest clubs. 

Our policy is clear: be sustainable’

19 Oct 2026 - The Guardian

Sid Lowe

The first time Fernando Roig watched Villarreal play as their president, he sat in the stand at a tiny whitewashed ground that had concrete fever and was half empty. It was a Sunday night in the second division, they lost 3-0 against Badajoz, and he didn’t enjoy it much.

But then, he never enjoys it much. Even tomorrow at Anfield, he will not: into his 30th year, the longest presidency in Europe, that is about the only thing that hasn’t changed. More than 1,000 games and still it happens. “I don’t get nervous,” he says. “It’s worse: I get worried, very anxious. I suffer a lot.

“It’s emotional to play Liverpool. This will be the fifth time we have faced them, the third at Anfield. The other two were semi-finals. I’ll watch the morning training session, travel with the team. We’ll go and eat; everywhere we go we get treated very well and we treat them well back. The next day I’ll watch the under-19s in the morning, that I do like. And then the game, which I don’t. Then we’ll fly back here very, very late. It’s very stressful.”

It is the morning after Villarreal have beaten Napoli in the Champions League and Roig is in an office at the headquarters of Pamesa, the ceramics company he owns. He is better now, the tension subsided. They needed that victory, their first in the competition going back to before they last faced Liverpool, in the 2022 semi-final.

A cabinet holds pictures, mementoes, footballs, a basketball, too. Three paintings by his wife, Elena Negueroles, fill the far wall. He has been talking a short while when two people join him. He introduces them as Villarreal’s consejero delegado, chief executive, and Pamesa’s director of communications; they are also his son, Fernando, and daughter, Elena, named after their parents.

“I can enjoy it today, the day after, tomorrow and the day after that,” the 79-year-old says. “Until Elche comes on Saturday and it’s time to suffer again. And then the Liverpool day. It’s very stressful for me.”

So why do it? “Because when the game ends, there’s that satisfaction, that feeling that the town, the province, have enjoyed it, that they admire their team. It’s about community. It costs people money to watch a game. What they want is to enjoy it and what we want is to give them that.”

Roig describes the offer to buy the club in May 1997 as an opportunity, but it was more like answering a plea. Villarreal had spent most of their history in tercera, reaching the regionalised Segunda B nine years earlier, and had never played in primera. In the second division for the first time, they had barely 1500 members, were struggling to stay afloat and the former player and current president Pascual Font de Mora was seriously ill. His family were looking for someone to take on the club and assume a debt near €80m.

Roig had money and experience with sports: Valencia Pamesa basketball club. His brother Paco owned Valencia’s football team.

Alongside José Manuel Llaneza, he began building at Villarreal. “In a city of 52,000 people, we did something we can be proud of,” he says. What they did is barely believable, although investment was heavy and Roig keeps insisting there was never any doubt. This, he says, is exactly as they imagined it.

Well, maybe not exactly. “We went up, probably before we were really ready, then came straight down again. Went back up. We got into Europe, reached a Champions League semi-final in 2006. We’ve been promoted three times, been relegated twice.

“The second relegation in 2012 was terrible: really, really awful. We started that year in the Champions League, but didn’t win a game and went down in the last minute of the final game. We were in the second division for one second all season, but it was the last second. We had to sell players, rebuild. I had to ‘compensate’.”

That was a warning they heeded. Roig sold a 2.4% shareholding of the 9% stake he had in the supermarket Mercadona to balance the books. Villarreal had in effect been part of the Pamesa group, but they were separated, only the sponsorship remaining, the whole model restructured. Now he says the first thing every year is survival – “42 points and it’s time to raise a toast” – even if ambitions, and indeed the model, see Europe as a minimum.

How much have you invested over the years? “I couldn’t say. Maybe about €200m. There has been a lot of investment: the training ground, another training ground, the stadium.” Roig looks at his son. “€180m, maybe? I haven’t calculated it all, but Villarreal is worth more than all of it. We can’t compete economically with the biggest clubs, the state clubs. We can’t have salaries of €10m, €12m, €15m, €20m. Our policy is clear: be sustainable, spend what we can generate. We’re not a selling club, but if someone offers the right amount maybe we sell, for two reasons: one, economics; and two, we won’t curtail a player’s career.”

There’s another glance across the table, something Roig does often. “The consejero delagado does everything now: he’s the one that decides, leads and executes,” he says. “He has us on a good path. I don’t do anything any more. All I do is suffer during games. We think we have done something important, but what really matters is what’s next. In 30 years we’ve spent 27 seasons in the first division, 19 in Europe.”

If Anfield offers a symbol of how far they have come, so do Liverpool’s rivals to the east. “When we went to sign Diego Forlán from Manchester United, I said to Llaneza: tell them to come and play a friendly here, make it part of the deal. And they said: “Where? Villarreal?” Roig says. “I said: ‘Don’t worry, they’ll come next year … and they’ll do it for free.’ And then next year, or maybe the year after, they came in the Champions League.

“Diego wasn’t playing much, but we looked after him, gave him affection, and he was a great player. He won the golden boot here. Because he was at Villarreal, no one talked about it much. When he won it again, at Atlético, then they talked about him. If you want, you can call us a family club; we admit it. It’s a club with no pressure, not much media attention, none of the toxic surroundings other clubs have. We have to create the pressure ourselves, the demands. Above all, we create an ecosystem.”

It works. It started with investment in established players, particularly from South America. But they searched for emerging footballers as well and, bit by bit, the academy, built on an old orange grove, bore fruit. Mention Santi Cazorla, who joined as a teenager, and Roig’s eyes light up. “An excellent player and an excellent person. He came as a kid. Real Madrid wanted him, but we convinced him to stay.

“He overcame so much with those injuries, then came back at the end. He didn’t know if he would be able to play again, but we welcomed him back, were pleased to give him that opportunity and he gave us three more superb years.

“And we had a Ballon d’Or winner here. Rodri was with us for five years. He wanted to progress and we weren’t going to stop him: he went to Atlético Madrid, from Atlético to Manchester, and won the Ballon d’Or. We have great memories of him, a good relationship. It fills me with pride to see him win the World Cup.

“Not just him: Álex Baena came to Villarreal at 11. He had those first years of melancholy, not being back at home in Almería, but he grew up here. Yéremy [Pino] came very young. Borja Iglesias, too. That’s an example of what we want to be.”

Ask Roig for a player from all those who have been at Villarreal and beyond Juan Román Riquelme or Robert Pires, Marcos Senna, Bruno Soriano and Gerard Moreno it is Pau Torres that comes to mind. “He’s born in the town and triumphed here, won a European title,” he says, “which was the only game I couldn’t go to.”

All those matches and Villarreal’s president missed the 2021 Europa League final, the greatest, most epic victory of all, the one that completed a journey and delivered their first trophy. Football can be cruel.

“I had Covid the week before,” Roig says. “I got certificates from every lab in Villarreal: they all showed I was negative. But as I was in the team bubble, Uefa demanded some other certificate. There was no time. We tried to argue, put some pressure on. It was no good. But it filled me with pride. And when Pau dedicated the win to me, it meant so much. He even came back from Poland and gave me his medal.”

It is here: a simple gold disc on black ribbon, around a match ball in the cabinet behind Roig’s son and daughter. “Pau won it there. As for me, I had to fly back and watch the final calmly at home with my wife. Well, ‘calmly’? I suffered there too, terribly.”