From a group of friends playing football to facing RCD Mallorca, the miracle of Atlètic Sant Just

A sporting miracle is unfolding on the outskirts of Barcelona, as Atlètic Sant Just, a local amateur club plying their trade in the regionalized 6th tier of the Spanish football pyramid, have enjoyed a spectacular rise since their founding in 2010. 

Family values are at the heart of everything at Atlètic Sant Just, no more evident than in the number of youth players who greet club sporting director Carlos Cebrián as he walks through the club’s facilities on a Wednesday afternoon as dozens of teams go through training routines on the two municipal pitches in an industrial estate overlooked upon by Ricardo Bofill’s architectural wonder, the Walden 7 apartment block. 

The club has seen huge rapid growth, applying professional standards to its amateur ethos. As just rewards for their prolific ascent, climbing four divisions of the lowest tiers of Catalan football since its founding, the club qualified for the preliminary phase of this year’s Copa del Rey, where they dismantled Atlético Calatayud 7-1 on aggregate and are now preparing to host La Liga outfit and 2024 cup finalists, RCD Mallorca, at the end of the month. 

The tie will be, without a doubt, the biggest game in the club’s 15-year history, and far beyond the realms of imagination of the group of parents who founded the club on the back of frustrations with how things were being run in FC Sant Just, the other local club, and decided to take matters into their own hands. 

“This club is about trying to give our children the best environment possible,” Cebrián, an original club founder, tells Catalan News. He explains that, after various disputes with those running the other club and losing board elections, a group of parents wanted a “more professional” club: “We didn't like the way things were being done.”

In the first year, the club had around 200 players in different age groups, including a first team that joined Quarta Catalana, the lowest senior division in Catalan football, which this season counts 35 different leagues at that level of the pyramid. Nowadays the club count around 720 players in 47 teams. “We're at a point where we can't grow anymore, there just isn’t the space,” Cebrián says. 

Family values

Driving this growth is a core set of family values. Most of the founding members were passionate educators and wanted to foster this spirit in their children’s sporting lives. “I think that resulted in a management model and a club that is clearly successful,” Cebrián says. “We've created a sense of community among the kids, coaches, directors. There’s a very, very strong bond here.”

Cebrián believes the club will never lose this tight-knit feeling, as he says it’s “the most important thing” about the whole club. He describes the first senior team the club had as a “somewhat mythical” group; a team comprised of a group of more than a dozen close childhood friends who, to this day, still go on holiday together and are now attending each other’s weddings and children’s christenings.

This core group started off as teenagers at the bottom of the football pyramid and achieved four promotions in 15 years to now compete on the brink of the national federation-organized leagues.

Atètic Sant Just is also run with a proud amateur ethos, and are one of the very few clubs playing in Lliga Elit that don’t pay their players. Last season, for the first time, the club decided to pay bonuses to the first team per point or game won, something Cebrián says is a “fair reward” for the players’ dedication. The club have few sponsors and instead survives on player fees.

“Our players have always been amateurs and haven't been paid to play for the first team,” he says “I've had to discuss this because people didn't believe me.”

Every year, players receive offers to join other clubs and earn money for their time. Alètic Sant Just don’t stand in the way of any player seeking to advance their career, but Cebrián says that many players have ended up returning to their local side, seeking the unique atmosphere offered. 

Philosophy

A philosophy off the pitch is met with a philosophy on it too. “Playing with the ball is non-negotiable,” Cebrián outlines, pointing out that the club were formed during the peak of Guardiola’s Barça.

“We always play out from the goalkeeper, who must know how to play with the ball at their feet.” The sporting director acknowledges that, despite their young age, Atlètic Sant Just have become a club considered in very high regard throughout Catalan football. 

Now competing in Lliga Elit, some have suggested to Cebrián that perhaps a tougher approach may be necessary to stay in the division which pits them against strong and historic clubs of Catalan football such as Júpiter, Pobla de Mafumet, and Martinenc. The director dismisses the though outright, refusing to abandon the principles that have served them so well thus far. 

Copa del Rey

On Wednesday, October 29, Atlètic Sant Just will take on RCD Mallorca in the first round of the 2025/26 Copa del Rey. On paper, the game is a total mismatch, pitting a 6th tier club against a 1st division team, the kind of romantic tie that only a cup competition can offer. 

“The players are really looking forward to it. It's a feeling we're all dreaming of since they started preparing for the cup,” Cebrián says, gleaming. “It's an unexplainable feeling, and until they experience it, they won't know.” 

Unfortunately for all involved in Atlètic Sant Just, the club will not be able to host the game in their regular facilities, as the Federation informed the club this week. The news means that the hundreds of fans and youth players of the club will not get the chance to see a professional first division team playing in the facilities where they train every week, and the game will instead have to be moved to another town. 

Despite that, excitement levels in Sant Just Desvern are high, and Cebrián says “it wouldn’t be the first time a surprise happened.”