Many football clubs are popular with fans from all over the world. It’s not unusual for many to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to Anfield to watch Liverpool or Old Trafford to watch Manchester United, for example.
However, tourists turning up at non-league grounds is a less frequent happening. That’s what happened on Saturday in Leicestershire at a seventh-tier English club.
Spanish fans turn up to support Harborough Town
The rather unusual event took place at Harborough Town, who were hosting St. Ives on Saturday afternoon, and unfortunately lost 2-1. Town’s regular fans were stunned to be joined by 100 Spanish supporters in the stands wearing the club’s shirts.
The visitors mixed and mingled with local fans, while singing and chanting their support for Harborough in their native language. The fans were subscribers to the Spanish YouTube channel La Media Inglesa (LMI), which pays homage to English football.
La Media Inglesa (LMI) was founded in 2011 by Ilie Oleart, a Catalonia-born Espanyol fan. It now has over 400,000 subscribers.
The Harborough game wasn’t the first time the channel had taken fans to games in England, as they had previously been to games at the likes of Brighton and Sheffield United.
Oleart spoke to several clubs outside the Football League, and then asked his subscribers which club they should visit. Harborough Town came out on top.
LMI founder Ilie Oleart explained their mission by telling the BBC: “Our aim was to transform a small local English club into a small local club with a global fanbase.”
“We thought they were the perfect club with the right values to share with our audience. It was certainly the best trip we have had so far.”
“I met people at the club in September to get to know their history, the town and the facilities. We thought they were the perfect club with the right values to share with our audience.”
The Bees go global
Harborough Town may not be the most obvious club for Spanish fans to visit, but their visit proves that every club has its own charm.
Courtesy of the supporters’ visit, Harborough Town’s games will now be streamed live in Spanish via the LMI YouTube channel. This will give more Spanish supporters the opportunity to become virtual supporters of the club, even if they cannot attend in person.
️ ” ́ ́ ”. ¡¡ !!” pic.twitter.com/gYKgelbk4j
— Harborough Town FC (@HarbTownFC_ES) April 22, 2025
However, fans in Spain will get an opportunity to see the Bees play live in the summer, as Harborough are set to embark on a Spanish tour in pre-season. The tour will include visits to Barcelona and Madrid, with their opponents not yet confirmed.
The extra interest in the club is obviously welcome. Most non-league clubs do whatever they can in the harsh football world outside of the Football League.
Publicity like the Spanish fans visiting the club can only be good for raising awareness of their presence and maybe boosting their financial coffers slightly.
Not the first non-league club to have foreign fans
Harborough Town is obviously not the first non-league club to have foreign supporters. When Wrexham were in non-league football, the Dragons supporters were all over the world.
Cynics may say that it only started when the club enjoyed a highly successful takeover by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. However, before the takeover, the club already had fans as far afield as Argentina.
In fact, an area of Patagonia was colonised by people from Wales in the 19th century. A year after forming, many of the Welsh settlers in the region started supporting the Dragons.
To this day, many of the settlers’ descendants in Y Wladfa (The Welsh-speaking community in Patagonia) still support Wrexham from afar. The invention of digital media has made it far more convenient to support a club thousands of miles away.
The rise in profile has benefited non-league football
While many criticised the way that Wrexham earned promotion, there is no doubt that their ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ documentary series benefited the non-league game as a whole.
The documentary series raised the profile of not just Wrexham but the league as a whole. It helped the National League gain followers worldwide that it wouldn’t usually have.
One side effect of that was the demand for more National League games to be televised all over the world. No doubt, many clubs in the fifth-tier gained virtual fans, who may one day become fans who attend games.
Hopefully, the fans’ visit to Harborough Town will have helped the club gain some new virtual supporters, which can only help the club have a brighter future.
Des McEwan
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