While the eyes of football turn to the World Cup, CD Castellon are trying to make history. Spain’s second-tier play-offs are ongoing and the prize of a place in LaLiga awaits the winner. For Castellon, it would end a 35-year absence from the top division.
In more ways than one, they are the play-off outsiders. Las Palmas are attempting to go straight back up. Almeria, Castellon's semi-final opponents, came down in 2024. Malaga were seconds away from a Champions League semi-final as recently as 2013.
But it is the way that Castellon are doing it that really makes them different. Bought by Haralabos Voulgaris in 2022, this Greek-Canadian entrepreneur who made his fortune as a gambler and tasted success in basketball, is trying to pull off the trick in football.
Voulgaris' data-led approach has already lifted Castellon from the third tier. His six-year plan is for the club based just up the coast from Valencia to reach LaLiga, so they are ahead of schedule if they can build on a first-leg draw against Almeria and win the final.
"It is not a secret that a lot of it is based on data," says Adam Jakobsen, when asked about it by Sky Sports . The Danish forward arrived from Swedish club Brommapojkarna, having previously had a loan spell in Slovenia. Castellon saw something in him.
"From the outside, it is something new but I really have not felt it has been like anything crazy or anything that is completely new to football." Jakobsen puts the club's success this season down to it being "combined with the normal stuff of football" at Castellon.
That means "having players that need to be able to work well with each other" but perhaps that is part of the science behind. Finding those synergies, the traits in one player that will unlock hidden talents in another - it is all part of the very best analysis.
Voulgaris leans on his own observations and the work of a consultancy company called Pitch32 in which Dave Reddin, once head of team strategy and performance at the Football Association, is prominent. Reddin calls himself as "a serial disruptor" in sport.
That tallies with Voulgaris' ties to Jamestown Analytics too, whose insights have helped propel Brighton and Hearts to success. Indeed, it was a conversation with Brighton owner Tony Bloom at a poker tournament in Monaco that was the catalyst for all this.
Voulgaris was seduced by the idea of taking a team through the divisions, seeing if he could replicate some of his basketball success as an adviser to the Dallas Mavericks, NBA champions in 2011. This time, he would be the one making all the key decisions.
He appears to accept football is harder to model. Even his observation that the game puts too much emphasis on draws within a three-points-for-a-win system has not necessarily translated to results with 12 draws in the Segunda Liga this season.
But whatever the impact of the analytical approach, it is clear that this a club and a city reinvigorated. "Here, playing for Castellon, it is a city that is really, really excited. You feel it everywhere you go and it is amazing," says Jakobsen. "It gives us so much energy."
The Dane explains: "You want to give everything. Being here in Castellon with a team that has had its time without the playoffs, without being up there, it is a really, really big chance and so exciting for the whole city. It has already been a historical season."
Under head coach Pablo Hernandez, the former Spain international who played in the Premier League with Swansea and Leeds, there has been a balanced approach. Young players have been signed and sold for a profit, but there is experience at Castellon too.
Jakobsen talks of "staying calm and doing our job" and namechecks Alberto Jimenez, Salva Ruiz and Diego Barri as key figures in helping the team to do just that. "The guys that are really, really good at calming us down before games." All are over the age of 30.
One complication is that two more experienced figures are missing for these play-off games. Australia international Awer Mabil and Congo midfielder Brian Cipenga have already departed for World Cup duty. Far from ideal given the stakes for Castellon.
"The biggest games of my career," says Jakobsen. Whatever he and others say to keep the emotions in check, promotion could be life-changing. "I am just trying to stay in the moment." But even he must allow himself to imagine what victory would mean.
"We have Villarreal and Valencia [nearby], big clubs also," says Jakobsen. "To play against them in the best league in the world would be something else. Then, of course, Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, all the top clubs in Spain, the top clubs in the world."
This is what Voulgaris did it for, the buzz of taking his own team to the top. Still outsiders. But still dreaming. "Anything can happen. It is definitely not impossible," says Jakobsen." How can they achieve it? "Preparing as normal. Analysing the opponents."
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Sources: Sky Sports
