One afternoon in November 2012, a few days before Real Oviedo received Coruxo at 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 in love with the club carbion Since his Erasmus in the city, he had launched the campaign SOS Real Oviedo look for shareholders.
The tweet in question, published at 5.47pm. on November 9, 2012, he said, “I just bought a share, am I the first shareholder of Maine-based Real Oviedo? #SOSRealOviedo.” The sender, one of hundreds at the 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 of the Asturian club since he was 21, returning to the First Division this year, Zohran Mamdani maintains a close relationship with football, in particular with Arsenal, a club of which he declares himself a fan. “Before starting my career in politics, I was a pitiful footballer,” he wrote on his 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 my Glutton (Bronx High School of Science Team).”
Born in Kampala, Uganda, 34 years ago, the new mayor of New York, the youngest since 1892, launched in September, less than a year after the World Cup landed in the United States, Game about greed (Game Over Greed), a campaign to ask FIFA to reserve a portion 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 every major sporting event.
“The World Cup is coming to New York in less than a year, and as a lifelong soccer fan, I’m very excited,” Mamdani begins in the promotional video for his campaign, released a day before pre-sales for the World Cup event open. “Now, will there be any working-class New Yorkers who can afford to go to the games? For the first time, FIFA will use so-called dynamic pricing, meaning tickets can be resold on its platform without any limits.”
“This means anyone can buy a ticket for $60 and put it up for sale shortly thereafter for $6,000,” he continues. “Also, unlike the last three World Cups (Qatar 2022, Russia 2018 and Brazil 2014), there is no space reserved for residents. That is, 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.”
While waiting for his requests to be realized before the next World Cup, Mamdani still has reason to celebrate. This Wednesday’s electoral victory was accompanied by a very special compliment, that of Real Oviedo, who, after having noted the link between the new mayor of New York and his own history, published the following message on X: “Congratulations on your victory! From today New York already has a little more of the blue of Real Oviedo.”
