Careers in football often take unexpected turns. Javier Jiménez Sacristán’s journey is a great example. In this interview, he shares how he went from a football fan working in IT in Mexico to becoming the CEO of Córdoba CF, where he helped the club ward off bankruptcy and secure a historic promotion to La Liga.
Following his time at Córdoba, Javier transitioned into roles at the intersection of innovation, technology, and professional football, working on projects that connected emerging technologies with club management and football development in Spain and Iraq.
Most recently, at La Liga, Javier served as Iraq Project Director, leading a unique collaboration with the Iraq Football Association to implement the ‘La Liga model’—a strategic project aimed at improving football infrastructure, development, and operations in the country and establish a new professional league - the Iraq Stars League.
The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for grammar and clarity.
[ Background ]
I played football as an amateur. I was a little crazy so I played as a goalkeeper, but I’m only 1.70m so, very short to be a professional goalkeeper! Of course, I was always a football fan - I support Atlético de Madrid. So, sports - and football especially - was always something I loved but I never thought I’d work in the football industry.
To cut a long story short, in 2011, I was working in Mexico in the IT industry and my boss at the time bought Córdoba. He had always wanted to have a football club. In Spain, there was a real estate crisis in 2008 and many owners of football clubs were involved in the real estate industry. So, the crisis affected the football industry and a lot of owners were looking to get out and sell their clubs.
[ CEO at Córdoba CF ]
Anyway, when he got to Córdoba, he asked me to join. I remember I started a sports master’s at a private university. It lasted just one month, but I wanted to understand the model of a football club a little better. In the end, I always remember this one sentence from my boss, ‘Javier, this is just income and expenses, it’s the same, income should be more than expenses.’
So, I just started! In 2011, the football industry was in terrible shape in Spain. I spent 6 seasons at Córdoba and we managed something incredible. The club was going into bankruptcy, we were even under administration but we managed to solve the debts. We were promoted to the first division in 2014, the first time for the club in 42 years. It was an amazing period.
I learned a lot in this time. It was also a key stage in Spanish football. For instance, in 2013, Javier Tebas was appointed president of La Liga - this is maybe the most important milestone in Spanish professional football.
[ Who is the CEO responsible for hiring? ]
Of course, the owner - my former boss - who was also the President, had the last decision. We learned a lot of things together and one journalist we knew gave us some advice in the beginning. First, you have to hire the sporting director - not the trainer or the coach. There was a person in Córdoba with a good reputation and we hired him. Then he was the one who chose our first coach - Paco Jémez.
This was amazing. In the first season, everyone told us, maybe we wouldn’t be relegated but our objective should be simply to remain in the division. But in that first season, we played in the playoffs already. We were knocked out but it was still a great start.
Football is crazy, you have to work 24/7 and you have to be ready to change your mind. But for me, it was great.
[ When you became CEO at Córdoba, was your boss correct (that it’s the ‘same’)? What were some of the differences between your role in IT and in football? ]
Above all, there are new stakeholders. For instance, media - in IT you don’t have a lot of media interest! You also deal with the local government, different councils and so on. In Córdoba, the club is the most important entity in the city and football is about passion. You have to try to combine the passion with the money - because the fans, the only thing they want is that the team wins. But you have to try to keep this club profitable, otherwise it’s impossible to achieve your goals.
The other really important difference is, as the CEO of a club, you don’t make the essential decisions. When we were promoted, it happened in the 93rd minute of the last match. Our budget went from around €8.5 million to over €35 million. The sporting director had a lot of influence, the coach had a lot of influence but in the end, the protagonists are the players - only they can really make this possible. In IT, or other industries, the CEO is the ultimate decision maker but not in football.
"the fans, the only thing they want is that the team wins. But you have to try to keep this club profitable, otherwise it’s impossible to achieve your goals"
[ After relegation from La Liga, are there some form of ‘parachute payments’ to support the club? ]
Yes, in our case, it was around €8 million that came from the broadcasting rights. There’s a part that La Liga always keeps for clubs that are relegated. Otherwise, the difference would ‘crack’ a lot of clubs. This helped us a lot and the next season we played in the playoffs again.
After that season, I left. In the end, 6 seasons, 3 playoffs - one that we won and were promoted. We had other successes like playing Barcelona in Córdoba in the Copa del Rey. It was something amazing.
[ Innovation Manager at Ponferradina ]
In 2017, after 6 years, I quit Córdoba and was trying to do something on my own. I worked with law firms on football financial topics. Then I went back to Mexico to work for another IT company. This company wanted to make products specialized for football and introduce their product to football clubs.
I was trying to sell one product to a club in the Spanish second division, Ponferradina. In the end, I guess I sold myself! They asked me to join the club. It’s a very humble club and I spent two seasons there as Innovation Manager, unfortunately, we were relegated to the 3rd tier and it was impossible to continue because the budget is very, very low at that level.
"I was trying to sell one product to a club in the Spanish second division, Ponferradina. In the end, I guess I sold myself!"
[ What does this role entail? ]
So, CVC reached an agreement with La Liga after the pandemic period where CVC invested over €2 billion in La Liga to try and improve the broadcasting and how the competition is running. This meant lots of clubs needed to change their mindset and digitalize in different ways.
Now, this club is a small club in the northwest of Spain with only 40,000 citizens, far from any big city. We needed to transform a lot of parts of how the club was managed. To get the ‘CVC money’ from La Liga you had to change the infrastructure and business models. La Liga created 7 verticals - things like marketing, communication, IT, etc - and you have to reach certain levels, otherwise you wouldn’t get the money.
And the CEO and President decided that I would be the best person to help them. I did a lot of things across these verticals - for example, with the sponsors, we created a business club with things like VIP tickets or additional advertising in the stadium that activated a lot of new sponsorship money. We also created ways for players to interact with fans and sponsors in different ways as well as upgrading the internal IT systems within the club.
[ La Liga Iraq Project Director ]
After Ponferradina, I spoke with Mr. Tebas and he offered me the project in Iraq. This was a strategic project by La Liga, they wanted to create their own ‘success case’ and create a new professional entity based on the ‘La Liga model’. They were starting the Iraq Stars League from scratch in a countrywide project encompassing professional football, grassroots and youth football.
It’s a big project, it’s not something just to sell broadcasting rights! I spent 18 months there and helped create the structure for the project. We implemented a lot of things from a new calendar system, standards for stadiums, data strategy and a lot of the strategies and models we have in La Liga. It’s a long term project and it’s not always easy to adapt. Iraq is a country that has suffered a lot. As recently as 2016 they were fighting with Daesh, it’s a complicated situation but they are trying and working to forget this and build a better future.
[ Were you based in Iraq? ]
Yes, in Baghdad. I had an enormous flat, almost 300m2 for me alone - everything in Baghdad is huge! I’d usually spend two months in Iraq and then a week or 10 days back in Spain at the La Liga headquarters. I needed a lot of support from La Liga and spent a lot of time with the different departments.
In Baghdad, I had a driver to go to the office, so I didn’t suffer too much in the horrible traffic jams!
Maybe one day I’ll write a book regarding my time in Iraq, it was something else! I’m a positive person and always try to find the best of each experience, but this was a completely different experience. I’d lived a long time in Mexico before but of course the culture in Iraq was so different and it wasn’t easy to adapt. An important problem was the communication, because English isn’t widely spoken, it’s not easy. But the people supporting me there were one of a kind!
[ Why is La Liga doing this in Iraq specifically? ]
The President of Iraq traveled to Spain. They visited the football federation and La Liga and he was the one who asked La Liga to join this project.
The Iraq Football Association (IFA) president is a former player and he loves Barcelona and tiki-taka. He visited Luis Enrique - who was Spain’s national team coach at the time and La Liga where he met Mr. Tebas. And that was the beginning of this amazing project. Now, even the national team coach in Iraq is Spanish - Jesús Casas - he was one of Luis Enrique’s assistants at the time.
So the opportunity came to La Liga, they didn’t ‘look’ for it.
[ What are the goals or desired outcomes of this ‘partnership’? ]
There are 2 main goals.
The first is to build a working professional league. The aim is to use La Liga as a reference and step by step change the management. Of course, it won’t happen right away but we are trying to implement changes - it won’t be the same but as close as possible. For example, creating requirements for stadiums and supporters, or broadcasting.
And the second is to improve youth and grassroots football in order to create high potential players. This is the most important project for Iraq because it’s for the children, the future. We created championships at U19, U17 and U15 levels and built programs for children to play after school. This, changing the way of life for children, is one of the priorities of the Prime Minister and IFA President.
[ It sounds like there was quite some support from the government and the IFA, was there any push back or resistance? ]
Of course, when you try to do something innovative, the people who are working with the old system feel threatened. It's not easy and when you’re always with a translator, it’s hard to tell them directly what you are thinking.
Previously, they had an old fashioned management and one of the solutions, like in other countries, was to bring people in from abroad. There were 4 Spanish coaches living in Iraq for this project for example. So, yes there’s a lot of push back and people unwilling to change but we have to be smart enough to convince or bypass them because football is moving in a new direction.
[ Why did La Liga agree to support this project? Maybe cynically, what’s ‘in it for them’? ]
Of course, as always in a company, the money. But it could be much bigger as well. If this project succeeds - of course, they will succeed! - La Liga can copy this model in different countries and regions. Iraq will be the ‘success case’.
In 2013, La Liga was broke - now it’s one of the most important entities in the world. They did this by changing the way things are managed across marketing, fan engagement, broadcasting, finances and a lot more verticals. This is the reason La Liga is now a successful company.
Now, they’ve reached an agreement with Costa Rica too. They want to help countries follow this model and promote the success of the ‘La Liga model’. That’s the strategy for La Liga.
"In 2013, La Liga was broke - now it’s one of the most important entities in the world"
[ You’ve just left La Liga and started at TOOOLs, what do you do there? ]
Now, I’m back in Spain and working remotely with TOOOLs, a startup related to sports and IT. I need this period, it’s not a rest - I’m a very active person - but I needed to change to spend more time with my family, my children and my friends. I’m in a new stage in my life and I think I made the best decision.
I would like to stay forever in TOOOLs! In La Liga, it’s a huge entity and now, I have direct contact with the co-founders. For me, this is very important and makes the chain of command much easier and more agile.
This company has the best platform for the management of sports federations. In Spain, we work with handball, rugby, boxing, kayaking, skiing and other winter sports. They can manage all their administrative tasks in an integrated platform. In sports, we can combine this with the players’ performance as well. My job here is to start an international business development department from scratch. The platform is good in Spain, it’s number one in the sports federations but we want to expand to more countries. I feel very comfortable and excited about my future in this company.
I consider myself a person who likes to create and build projects from scratch. But once they get to another stage - like in Iraq - maybe there are other people that are more interested in running the day to day. For me, it’s maybe a little boring! I always want to create new things, so I think I’m in the right place.