The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig wrote a wonderful book titled “Great moments of humanity” where he tells 14 historical miniatures. What does “historical miniature” mean? A moment which went unnoticed when it happened but changed the whole course of history. So, for example, a small door left opened caused the fall of Byzantium, and a law offence allowed Nuñez de Balboa to become the first western man to sail the Pacific Ocean. A mere trifle!
Our remarkable moment was many years ago but as it happens with historical miniatures it went unnoticed. In fact, the remarkable moment for Real Oviedo started to be developed in 1987 when the European Union decided to bet for a student exchange programme which was given the name of Erasmus. Some years later, an English guy called Sid Lowe would arrive in Oviedo thanks to one of these grants. Fate wanted the team of this city to live one of its best days by then. Playing in the Spanish Premier League, with great footballers and putting pressure on the greatest when they had to play in Carlos Tartiere Stadium. Sid, a football lover, became keen on that small team which played in blue and white and whose supporters cheered up to exhaustion during every single match.
Academic years always come to an end and that year was not going to be different. Life led him to be one of the best sport journalists in the world – correspondent of The Guardian and team member of the main Spanish mass media – and one of the most popular within social networks. Sid kept on being a Real Oviedo supporter and whenever he could, he went to see his Spanish team and send the team an encouraging message to his tens of thousands of followers.
In 2012, for umpteenth time, Real Oviedo is between a rock and a hard place. The club needs around 2 million Euros to avoid immediate extinction, With a Board of Directors formed by supporters, Real Oviedo starts to shape the share offer which should guarantee its future. Foundations are set, agreements with banks are achieved in order to get loans under favourable conditions and the machinery is started.
However, expectations are not as positive as they would have been expected to. Economic crisis, the club’s bad moment and the previous years, an example of a really bad management, make doubts emerge among the membership base. And here he comes again, Sid Lowe, who starts to help the entity and gives the share offer an international role, expected by nobody. And suddenly, shareholders from all over the world start to arise, New Zealand, USA, UK, Ireland, Malaysia, Thailand, Ghana, Mexico and so on. Most of them have no relation to Real Oviedo but they did understand the soul of this club: a club punished to the limit by bad luck, a club which will never give up, a club which wants to be the pioneer in the fight against modern football.
In one single day, more than 1500 people bought Real Oviedo shares via the Internet. More than 40.000€ have been collected to save a feeling, a way of understanding life. Real Oviedo will be eternally in debt with all these people who knew how to understand what all this meant. All those people who despite being thousands of km away from Carlos Tartiere Stadium just needed to hear a call for help and came to rescue a historic club.
Meanwhile, in the offices of Real Oviedo, a man came in to buy shares. When he got his form to be filled in, feeling ashamed, he said: “Would you mind filling it in, I cannot read or write. I just have 80€, but Real Oviedo is my life and I don’t want it to disappear”. This man, unknowingly, was also becoming part of a remarkable moment in the history of Real Oviedo, led by an English man called Sid Lowe, better known as Sir Lowe in Oviedo.