On an afternoon in November 2012, a few days before Real Oviedo welcomed Coruxo to the Carlos Tartiere stadium, already accustomed to seeing his team suffer in the third and fourth categories of Spanish football, a message crossed the Atlantic in the form of a tweet. The recipient was Sid Lowe, an English journalist who, passionate about the club, carbayón Since his Erasmus in the city, he launched the campaign SOS Real Oviedo look for shareholders.
The tweet in question, published at 5:47 p.m. on November 9, 2012, said: “I just bought a share, am I possibly the first shareholder of Maine-based Real Oviedo? The sender, one of hundreds at that time, remained completely unknown for years, until this Sunday, more than a decade later, he became the new mayor of New York City.”
In addition to being a shareholder in the Asturian club since the age of 21, returning to the First Division this year, Zohran Mamdani maintains a close relationship with football, especially with Arsenal, a club of which he declares himself a fan. “Before I started my career in politics, I was a pitiful football player,” he wrote on social media in 2020. “As in many other cases, my best performances came in high school, when I scored as many goals as I could with the wolverines (Bronx Science High School team).
Born in Kampala, Uganda, 34 years ago, New York’s new mayor, the youngest since 1892, launched in September, less than a year before the World Cup came to the United States, Game over greed (Game Over Greed), a campaign to ask FIFA to reserve part of the event’s tickets for New York residents, for whom Mamdani also demands a 15% discount at the box office.
Furthermore, the representative of the Democratic Party urged the body that governs world football to control and limit the resale of tickets, a practice that, despite being persecuted, is increasingly common before any major sporting event.
“The World Cup is coming to New York in less than a year and as a long-time soccer fan, I’m very excited,” begins Mamdani in his campaign’s promotional video, published the day before advance sales for the World Cup open. “Now, will there be working-class New Yorkers who can afford to go to games? For the first time, FIFA will use so-called dynamic pricing, meaning tickets can be resold on its platform without any limits.”
“That means anyone can buy a ticket for $60 and put it on sale shortly after for $6,000,” he continues. “Furthermore, unlike the last three World Cups (Qatar 2022, Russia 2018 and Brazil 2014), there is no space reserved for residents. In other words, the biggest sporting event in the world will be held in your city and you will not be able to enjoy it due to excessive prices.”
Waiting for his demands to materialize before the next World Cup, Mamdani has, in any case, reasons to celebrate. This Wednesday’s electoral victory was accompanied by a very special congratulation, from Real Oviedo, which, after noting the connection between New York’s new mayor and its own history, published the following message on X: “Congratulations on the victory! From today onwards, New York already has a little more of the blue of Real Oviedo”.
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