Ontinyent CF is disappearing

Very sad news from the Valencian Community today. Ontinyent CF, which for most all of its 90 years has been kicking around in the third or fourth divisions of Spanish football, has announced it is ‘stopping its sporting activities’ effective immediately.

The club has had financial difficulties and was hoping to find someone to take over and clear up its outstanding payroll, but has given up. Players were owed money for the past several months, have had no support from any of the ownership, and countless unfulfilled promises, but indicated the decision to fold was not theirs.

Ontinyent is a smallish town (~35,000 population) in the Valencian interior, far from the bright lights of Valencia or the Costa Brava. As Chris Clements noted in his appreciation of their ground, El Clariano, “for every Real Madrid or FC Barcelona there are a hundred clubs like Ontinyent’.

Well, now there is one fewer. As several Villarreal fans have pointed out, if you go back to the 1980’s, Villarreal was one of those clubs too—playing mostly in the third or fourth tier with a couple of years in the Segunda. (Ontinyent came within a minute of promotion to the Segunda in 2010, losing to Alcorcón; that would have been their first season in the second tier since 1971).

What this means for the current state of play in the Segunda B, group 3 is not decided yet. Ontinyent were 17th, and their eight remaining matches included games against Espanyol B, Cornella, and Lleida Esportiu, who are numbers 4-6 in the table. Their last match, as it now stands, was last week’s 0-0 draw against Villarreal B.

There is a press conference called for tomorrow, but it’s unlikely the decision will be overturned.