Messi buys Eldense and Cristiano already owns 25% of Almería: Spanish Second Division has gone mad (and Sunday brings action to El Molinón)

What's up, everyone? I settle down to write a calm preview for matchday 5 and then THIS drops: Leo Messi has reached a preliminary agreement to buy 100% of CD Eldense. Yep, Eldense. The bottom of the LaLiga Hypermotion table. The team that's coming to El Molinón this Sunday.

Journalist Rubén Uría broke it Monday afternoon, September 8th, and within minutes El Desmarque, Relevo, Elda's press and half the planet had it. So let's break it down: what's confirmed, what isn't, and what does all this have to do with Sunday's match. Because it's quite a bit, actually.

⚽ The match: Sporting - Eldense, Sunday the 13th at 14:00

Let's start with what matters to us. Here's the match details, and the scoreboard below updates automatically on Sunday as the game plays — no need to refresh anything.

And here's how both teams arrive, with the table in hand. Also live: once the matchday finishes, these two rows will update on their own.

And here's my pre-match video, filmed on the same Sunday: how Eldense arrives, the coaching change and what Sporting needs.

📌 What's confirmed (and what isn't)

Negotiations have been brewing for months between Messi's legal representatives and the TH group. Current president Carolina Holguín had already informed Elda's mayor, Rubén Alfaro, in early September that she had an offer on the table.

What still isn't locked down:

• Due diligence. Before signing, the entire club has to be audited: accounts, contracts, debts, licences. It's the formality that can drag out —or kill— any deal like this.
• CSD approval. The Spanish Sports Council has to sign off on a change of shareholding in a Sports Public Limited Company. It's the final filter, and it's not just a formality.
• The price. No official figure. Everything you read about what Messi is paying, right now, is speculation.
• The date. Thursday, September 10th is pointed to as a possible day to announce it officially, but that's a working date, not a confirmation.

Elda's mayor summed it up better than anyone: «tonight we've been confirmed that there's already a preliminary agreement, but we must exercise the caution these situations require and wait to see if the deal actually goes through». Exactly.

🏟️ Why Eldense? The numbers in Elda

A lot of people found the choice surprising. Not me so much, and these figures explain why:

• Elda has just over 55,000 inhabitants and the club has around 3,500 season ticket holders. Do the maths: that's an insane ratio for a city that size.
• The Nuevo Pepico Amat holds 4,036 seats. In other words: the stadium is practically full of season ticket holders before selling a single ticket. It's by far the smallest ground in the division.
• The club is over a century old (1921) and spent 60 straight years out of professional football until promotion in 2023.
• It dropped to Primera RFEF, lasted just one season there and came back up in June 2026. This is its second recent spell in the second tier.
• The local council has been backing the club's structure for twelve years (facilities lease and upgrades included), and that's exactly what makes it a buyable project: financially healthy entity, silver-tier league status, city fully behind it and room to grow.

Translation: you don't buy Eldense for the fanbase it has today, you buy it because of the price and what it could become. A Second Division club in Spain is a cheap platform to an outrageously expensive First Division.

🔵 It's not his first club: the Cornellà precedent

This doesn't come out of nowhere either. On April 16th, 2026 Messi already bought UE Cornellà, now in Tercera RFEF. That was a small operation, almost experimental. This is a different league —literally—: it would be the first time Leo Messi owns a professional club in Spain.

And it fits his current life stage: Messi's already said goodbye to the Argentina national team after the World Cup, he's still at Inter Miami, and what he's building around himself is an ownership structure, not a playing career. If you're interested in that side of things, I covered it all here: Messi retires from Argentina national team.

🐐 And now the real story: Cristiano already owns 25% of Almería

Because the Portuguese got there first. On February 26th, 2026, Cristiano bought 25% of UD Almería through CR7 Sports Investments, a subsidiary specifically created within his CR7 S.A. company. The club announced it officially and positioned it within the ownership consortium headed by SMC Group, chaired by Mohamed Al Khereiji, which took over Almería in summer 2025 from Turki Al-Sheikh. The figure wasn't made public. Cristiano said at the time he'd long wanted to contribute to football beyond the pitch, and that Almería had solid foundations and room to grow.

The differences, and they're massive

And here's where it gets interesting, because between «both have a Second Division club» and what's actually true there's a world of difference:

	Leo Messi	Cristiano Ronaldo
Club	CD Eldense	UD Almería
Stake	100% — outright owner	25% — minority partner
Status	Preliminary agreement, pending CSD approval	Closed and official
Since	September 2026, if signed	February 26th, 2026
Vehicle	Personal investment, solo	CR7 Sports Investments (CR7 S.A.)
Does he run the club?	Yes, completely	No: SMC Group is in control
Stadium	Nuevo Pepico Amat · 4,036	Juegos Mediterráneos · around 22,000
Other club in Spain	UE Cornellà (Tercera RFEF)	—

Translation: Cristiano put in money, Messi puts in money and signs the deal. One gets into a Saudi consortium that already runs the show; the other takes the whole club home. If I had to pick which of the two moves is more ambitious, I wouldn't need to think about it very long.

📅 The Messi-Cristiano that's already on the calendar

And now hold on tight, because this is literal and it's in LaLiga's official calendar: Eldense and Almería play each other this very season.

• First leg — matchday 1, 16 August 2026: Almería 3-0 Eldense. It was played before Messi came into the picture, so that was a solo CR7 performance. Bonini in the 15th and Dzodic and Melamed in stoppage time of the first half: it was done before the break.
• Return leg — matchday 37, 2 May 2027, at Nuevo Pepico Amat: that would be the first one. The first ever Messi vs Cristiano match with both as owners, on a four-thousand-capacity pitch in Elda, a Sunday in May in Segunda División. If someone had told you this fifteen years ago, when they were splitting Ballon d'Or awards, you'd have laughed them out of the room.

🎮 What if they signed themselves? (this is pure fantasy, heads up)

You've asked me twenty times this afternoon, so let's play — making crystal clear that there's absolutely nothing to this whatsoever. Zero. It's a pub-talk "what if…?"

The real starting data: Messi is 39 and has a contract with Inter Miami; Cristiano is 41 and renewed with Al-Nassr until 2027. Both, moreover, earn amounts that no Segunda club in Spain could pay even if they took a provincial collection. So the obstacle isn't regulatory: it's that the maths don't work.

But imagine it for a second. Pepico Amat, 4,036 seats, with Messi as owner and player. Season tickets would sell out in an afternoon with a waiting list stretching to Alicante. Resale for Eldense-Almería would cost more than a Clásico. And El Molinón, with 29,000 people, would be one of the few stadiums in the category able to handle a visit like that without collapsing the city.

It won't happen. But that in September 2026 we're talking about this in the buildup to a Sporting match already says quite a lot about how weird and wonderful football has become.

🚨 And meanwhile, on the pitch: Eldense are bottom

Here comes the beautiful contrast. While half the world talks about Messi, Eldense are twentieth, in the relegation zone: four matchdays, zero wins, two draws and two defeats, 2 points, 2 goals for and 6 against. Only Albacete and Ceuta, both still on zero, are below them.

And last Sunday the club made a brutal decision: sack Claudio Barragán, the manager who'd brought them up to Segunda, after just four matchdays. It was the first managerial departure of the season across the entire category. He left after the 0-0 at home against Mallorca.

The dugout is now occupied, on an interim basis, by Josep Ferrando, who was the assistant. His first match in charge: El Molinón. If the club doesn't announce anyone before Sunday, the interim manager's debut for the team Messi's about to buy will be in Gijón, at two in the afternoon, in front of our fans.

🔴⚪ How does this affect Sporting?

On the pitch, not much: Sunday it's eleven against eleven and Messi isn't going to turn out as a centre-back. But there are three things that do affect us closely:

• A team with its house in chaos is unpredictable. A managerial change and a change of ownership in the same week can go two ways: a team that's lost its bearings or a team buzzing from the adrenaline rush. And Sporting arrive having lost 0-2 to Girona, so taking them lightly is out of the question.
• Media spotlight. A Sporting-Eldense matchday 5 fixture nobody outside Asturias and Alicante watches. A Sporting-"Messi's team" match gets watched by half the world. If it's signed Thursday, Sunday El Molinón is on channels in Argentina, the United States and everywhere else.
• Points are points. Sporting are 7 points with 4 played, in no-man's-land but a stone's throw from the playoff, because from 2nd to 11th there are two points. Beating the bottom side at home isn't optional. It's mandatory. Everything else is noise.

And a warning we've learned the hard way: in Segunda, the team that's just sacked its manager wins the next match more often than logic would allow. The famous "recovery boost" is a cliché, but it's a cliché that exists because it happens.

💰 The fashion for footballer owners

Messi isn't a rare case, he's the tip of a trend. In recent years we've grown used to seeing ex-players and active players buying modest clubs: it's an asset that appreciates with promotion, gives creative control over a brand and works as a natural exit when the career ends. What changes here is the scale of the name. It's not "a former footballer". It's Messi. And the effect on shirts, sponsorships and the value of image rights for a Segunda club has no possible comparison.

For Eldense, if it happens, the interesting question isn't how much money comes in. It's what project comes with it: whether it's a club that'll be a launchpad for young South American talent heading to Europe, or a genuine sporting bet on promotion to First Division. Nobody's said that yet.

🧐 Five facts for the pub

• If it closes, Messi will have two clubs in Spain: Cornellà (Tercera RFEF) and Eldense (Segunda).
• Nuevo Pepico Amat, with 4,036 seats, fits inside El Molinón seven times.
• Eldense is the only Hypermotion team to have changed manager before matchday 5… and could change owner in the same week.
• Barragán was the first manager sacked across the entire Segunda División this season.
• The club has worn the blue and garnet in their badge since their foundation in 1921. Yes: Barça's colours. Someone'll make the joke, so I'm making it first.

🔮 What to expect this week

Eyes on Thursday 10th: that's the date all the media are working with for the official announcement, provided due diligence and the CSD come through. If it's confirmed, Sunday 13th at El Molinón could be, without a hint of exaggeration, the first match of the Messi era as owner in Spanish professional football.

And if it doesn't happen, well we'll have had a laugh and we'll have a normal Sporting-Eldense where we need to win anyway. COME ON SPORTING. 🔴⚪

📺 Sunday 13th · 14:00 · El Molinón

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