How Tile Took Villareal CF to the Top

On Sunday, the dramatic 2022 World Cup wrapped up in Doha, with Argentina taking home the glory. Now, as the celebrations continue, the world’s best soccer players return to their teams throughout the major European leagues. For the most part those players will be going back to work for team owners who are the traditional titans of soul-crushing modern capitalism: debt-generating shopping mall barons; the sovereign wealth funds of oil-rich gulf states; ruthless private equity groups.

But in the east of Spain, on the Mediterranean coast, in the tiny town of Villarreal, there’s a top soccer team whose success is tied to a less divisive industry. They’re called Villarreal CF and their billionaire owner Fernando Roig, 75, owns Pamesa, a Spanish ceramics brand that’s been exporting wall and floor tiles since the ’80s. Villarreal’s eye-catching yellow jerseys read Pamesa Ceramica. The team plays in a stadium called Estadio de la Cerámica. The outside of the stadium is cladded with massive yellow tiles. Inside, the stadium is packed full of human-sized tile from its staircases to its bathrooms to its restaurant. That restaurant is named, naturally, El Ceramista—and features an actual tile showroom.

This isn’t happenstance: the town of Villarreal is in the heart of the Castellon Province, Spain’s ceramic tile powerhouse. And Villarreal CF is both an ambassador for the region’s ceramics industry and one of its most beloved beneficiaries.

Before Roig bought Villarreal in 1997, the club tended to bounce between the third and second divisions of Spanish soccer. But since, firmed up by the stable support of Roig and Pamesa, the traditionally small club has succeeded beyond practical expectations. This year marks their 23rd straight year in La Liga, the top division of Spanish soccer, where they compete against the world famous Real Madrid and Barcelona. In 2022, they made the semifinals of the Champions League, the biggest European club tournament. A year before that they beat the English giants Manchester United to win the Europa League, another huge competition. At that time United’s budget was $840 million. Villarreal’s? A relatively paltry $120 million.

Juan Antón De Salas, Villarreal’s Commercial Director, says that the club began to actively integrate with the local industry about a decade ago. "We said, ‘hey, we are a flagship of the ceramics sector around the world. That’s when we shifted." First came the placement of Pamesa on the front of the shirt. (Clubs in Europe usually sell that advertising space to the highest outside bidder.) Then came the ceramics-based name change for the stadium, which used to be called El Madrigal, and, with the name change, all that tiling placement. "The quality of the product we have," De Salas says dreamily—"it’s not a normal stadium."

And Estadio de La Cerámica doesn’t only showcase Pamesa Ceramica, De Salas explains, but tiling from a variety of local companies. (Their names are also featured on the outside of the stadium.) Says De Salas, "If you’re the CEO of Argenta"—a local company and a Villarreal sponsor—"and you say, ‘Hey Juan, we are coming over with our biggest client,’ we will definitely open the stadium." Another company featured in the stadium is the major high-end tile brand Porcelanosa, one of Pamesa’s big competitors. Says De Salas, "It’s something like going to Detroit and seeing GM and Ford joining forces."

Estadio de La Cerámica holds a little over 20,000 people, which is almost half of the population of the town of Villarreal. "It’s a small territory," De Salas says, "so with that in mind, it’s hard" for Villarreal CF to compete among the big-budgeted clubs both in Spain and throughout Europe. "But with all this strong corporate support, it doesn’t feel like we’re punching above our weight. How you are identified with the community, it helps a lot. This is how we can walk, together, to the next level. You wouldn’t be doing this interview with me if we weren’t strongly associated with the area. You have a region that’s full of entrepreneurs and dedicated to construction." And outside of the heavyweights, Pamesa and Porcelanosa, "we are talking about mostly small businesses. Very proud people."

De Salas points out that, in line with La Liga’s financial stipulations, Villarreal is a sustainable club: they carry no debts and operate only with the money they make year after year. Ambition in pro sports is usually tied to ever-rising expenditures, and all that big money has increasingly come from aforementioned ethically-dubious sources. But Villarreal want to keep ambitions high in their own unique way. De Salas says that, much in the way that a construction company might seek continuous improvements in its processes, Villarreal similarly aspires to do what they do, only more efficiently. "We just want to be better," he says. "We won against Manchester United" in 2021 "and I feel that we are better now."

That victory against Manchester United was a wild one. It came after a long tournament during which Villarreal also beat another well-funded English club, Arsenal. In the final itself, the game was tied at the end of 90 minutes, then tied again after an extra 30 minutes. In the end, it took 11 rounds of penalty kicks for Villarreal to come out triumphant. It was a win that Villarreal fans will always cherish for its pure, thrilling entertainment.

For De Salas, it’s hard not to see the unlikely victory in terms of the underlining financing. "You’re talking six times more money," he says, when comparing United’s budget to Villarreal’s. "With all due respect to other teams—that was not a minor club. It was Man United. It’s like you’re playing a video game and you have to face the final monster." For just a second here, De Salas drops some of the humbleness that defines his plucky ceramics-centric club and points to Manchester United’s recent troubles, which has seen them spend a lot of money without finding on-the-field success. "They have a sporting crisis," he smiles, "and maybe that started because of us."

Top photo of Liga Promises, an international youth tournament hosted by the team, courtesy of Villareal CF.

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