This scrappy underdog La Liga team is investing in a scrappy underdog football nation.
Villarreal is a quaint and historic Spanish City on the east coast of the Iberian peninsula. The community of about 52,000 inhabitants is known for its tile industry, one of the country’s notable exports.
The heartbeat of the community is Villarreal CF, one of Spain’s most storied football clubs. The Yellow Submarine, as they are known, won the Europa Cup, the second-tier international club competition of Europe four years ago and are a fixture in La Liga, the Spanish top tier.
In early 2024 ago they opened their youth academy in the Philippines, one of 20 worldwide. It seems that at the moment the players are paying for the training with their parents, but club representatives say they hope to venture into the talent-rich provincial areas to mine for players at some point.
Villarreal held a sevens youth tournament over the weekend featuring their Filipino team, two Villarreal youth sides from Australia, and several clubs from here at the Ayala Vermosa pitch in Cavite.
Why would a Spanish team want to put an outpost here? That is the question we posed over lunch last week with Villarreal Philippines officials and their club ambassador, Marcos Senna.
Senna is a Brazilian-born central midfielder who Spain naturalized and who became a vital cog in the Furia Roja team that won the 2008 European Championship. Spain would go on to capture their first and only World Cup in South Africa two years later, and then complete the dynasty with a Euro crown in 2012, when they defeated Italy 4-0 in the final.
Over sushi and tempura at Umu in Dusit Thani we had a somewhat free-flowing conversation with the aid of Mar Llaneza of Villarreal who served as a translator, and the dusting off of my Tarzan Spanish learned from classes in high school and college.
Senna bleeds the yellow of Villarreal, having played for them for a decade and captaining the side. He says that unlike the wealthier clubs in Spain like the two major Madrid teams and Barcelona, Villarreal does not have a massive budget. They need to be creative in order to recruit players and be competitive, and these youth clubs in different parts of the world are part of that plan.
Professional clubs don’t just have academies out of altruism. These youth centers of excellence can be a revenue stream. The idea is to get a gifted young player at an early age and develop him. Perhaps blood him first in a youth squad and then in the senior team when he is in his late teens. If he impresses he can stay with the club and help them improve. Or he might attract attention from a bigger club who will pay the parent club a handsome fee to sign him.
This is basically the career path trod by Villarreal left-sided player Alex Baena. The 24-year old Spaniard joined Villarreal when he was ten years old in 2010. He made his debut for Villarreal’s C team in 2018 then immediately got promoted to the B team afterwards. There were a few loan spells here and there but from 2020 to 2025 Baena made more than a hundred appearances for the Yellow Submarine.
In the off-season he moved up the food chain when Atletico Madrid recruited him. He has made ten appearances this season, scoring twice.
According to the website transfermarkt.com Atleti ponied up 42 million Euros for Baena’s signature. That’s the best piece of transfer business from a selling point of view in Villarreal’s history. Villarreal now has cash to purchase other promising players and boost the squad, or fund other operational expenses.
Villarreal’s 20 academies spread over the Middle East and Asia-Pacific give the club access to plenty of young players. Not all will become world-class professionals, but for all you know there could be a diamond in the rough or two who might turn out to be a star. That player can either don the Villarreal yellow or be shipped off for another lucrative fee.
Villarreal might have difficulty beating out the top club academies in mature footballing countries like Spain, but they could unearth hidden gems in other locales, like the Philippines where the competition is less intense.
Eumir and Neth Siao are directors of the Villarreal Philippines Academy. Their twin sons Ellai and Nacho, 15 years old, live in Spain and play in the Villarreal youth system. Their team mate is none other than the son of Senna himself.
The Siao twins would make history if they could break into a top European club one day. But at the very least they are receiving training and elite match experience that their peers here in the Philippines can only dream of. The Siao brothers have an inside track on making it to our national age-group and senior teams one day thanks to Villarreal. So we should welcome the opportunities that a club like Villarreal brings to the Philippine football landscape.
A quick look at the La Liga table reveals that this plucky outfit is sitting third on the table, a mere point adrift of second-place Real Madrid and with a game in hand to boot. This club has a can-do spirit and mentality that Philippine football definitely can adopt.
Banner Images from VPA Sports