History of RCD Mallorca Football Club Spain
The oldest club in the Balearic Islands, RCD Mallorca was founded in 1916 by Adolfo Vázquez, a republican engineer, who named the club Alfonso XIII Football Club after the then Spanish king.
The first stadium, called Buenos Aires, was inaugurated on March 25, 1916, with a 0–8 loss against Barcelona. And, on June 28, 1916, Spanish king Alfonso XIII de Borbón honored the team with the title Real Sociedad, and the team came to be known as Real Sociedad Alfonso XIII Foot-Ball Club.
In 1917, the Catalan Federation admitted Real Sociedad Alfonso XIII into the Catalan Championship tournament. The Mallorcan team reached the final in Barcelona, where they played against FC Palafrugell, and won 3-1, their first title.
And so, the Mallorcan club tried to broaden its sporting repertoire by incorporating a cycling team in 1919.
This coupled with the influence of the Second Spanish Republic caused the club to change its name to Club Deportivo Mallorca. Still with that name in 1945, the club inaugurated Es Fortínas the new stadium of the Balearic club. But, during that same season and in honor of the man who had started working and preparing that ground three years prior, the club changed the name of the stadium Lluís Sitjar.
In the 1949-1950 season, under the presidency of Conde de Olocau, the club recouped the title of royal title of Real, and game to be known for the first time in its history, Real Club Deportivo Mallorca, the same name that has withstood history by remaining the current name.
In 1960, RCD Mallorca earned its first promotion to the "División de Honor" under the tutelage of coach Juan Carlos Lorenzo and president Jaime Rosselló. In 1964, RCD Mallorca again earned promotion, this time to the Primera Division, under coach Cesar Rodriguez and president Baron de Vidal. Then, in 1969, RCD Mallorca earned its third promotion to the Primera Division, with coach Juancho Forneris and president Pau Servera.
HISTORIC UPS AND DRASTIC DOWNS
This decade produced three promotions to the Primera Division, including the first in Club history. However, it also produced the same number of relegations.
The scorer of the first goal for RCD Mallorca in the Primera Division was Joan Forteza. He was the only player to survive the roster changes from the previous season after President Jaime Roselló Pascual dismissed all other members of the roster. Meanwhile, the coach of that 1960´s squad was Argentine Juan Carlos Lorenzo.
He led the team into the Primera Division all the way from the depths of the third division, for the first time on April 17, 1960. It was a mere 44 years since the club was founded under the name of "Alfonso XIII FBC."
The members of the roster that would come to be known as the architects that earned the Club´s first promotion into the highest category of Spanish soccer are: Zamora, Vendrell, Febrer, Arqué, Diego, Cobo, Magín, Juanele, Guillamón, Bolao, Boixet, Ladaria, Forteza, Garcés, Currucale, Gassó, Martínez, Lorenzo, Villamide, Sureda, Oviedo, Rodríguez II, Czoka, Mir, and Laguardia.
RCD Mallorca was one of only 16 professional teams to compete in this top division. And the team reinforced by picking up players from FC Barcelona, among others, where the likes of Haro, Davoine, Irusqueta and Flotats all arrived. This first season in the top division ended with RCD Mallorca in ninth place of the sixteen total teams, and coach Lorenzo did not last through the season, just like the president, who was replaced by Sir Lorenzo Munar.
In the following season, the team finished eleventh. And so, with many ups and downs, RCD Mallorca did not last more than three years in the top echelon of Spanish soccer. The team dropped into the second division until 1964-65, when it rose up again. But, in that day in age, the only direct promotion came via winning the Segunda Division, while the second-place finisher had to play in the playoff for promotion.
In the 1965-66 season, RCD Mallorca dropped back down to the Segunda Division, after a tumultuous season in the locker room. Juan Forteza, an eleven-year player with the Club, left for Lleida. Other players followed suit and left for different clubs, and the team finished in fifth place in the return to the Segunda Division.
Then, in the 1967-68 season, Juan Carlos Lorenzo replaced Dauder as coach. But after failing to win promotion, Lorenzo was cast aside in April.
Fortunately, 1969´s coaching duo of Juan Carlos Forneris and Sergio Rodriguez led the team back to the top-flight. But, that joy was short-lived, as the team found itself in last place the following year. The club was back into the Segunda Division, and worse, in a spiraling crisis, institutionally and athletically, which would take decades to fix.
STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE
After the Club´s last descent from the Primera Division into the Segunda Division, a truly devastating decade began.
As the years went up in number, Mallorca´s category went down. In 1974-75, the Club dropped down to the Tercera Division, and like that, the Club was immersed in the most profound athletic and institutional crisis in its history. The recently created "Segunda B" division did not solve anything, for the Club qualified 18th in that division in 1977-78, resulting in demotion to the third division. RCD Mallorca was about to disappear.
In November 1977, RCD Mallorca became the first club in Spanish soccer in which the players enclosed themselves in the locker room, demanding payment of their salaries. Previously, the rights of all of the roster had been auctioned off. The bid was then deserted because nobody launched any offer for any player.
And, the forces of nature united to save the Club from dissolving. In the 1979-80 season, RCD Mallorca topped the Tercera Division and won promotion to that newly created Segunda B Division, which was a significant improvement in the Club´s precarious institutional position.
DEFEAT AND TRIUMPH
RCD Mallorca started the 1980s trying to leave behind the tumultuous decade before, where the team jostled between the Segunda A division (second), Segunda B (third), and Tercera Divisions (fourth). The arrival of President Miquel Contestí provided hope, as the team immediately won promotion to the Segunda A division in the 1980-81 season. That impressive team was trained by Antonio Oviedo, who guided RCDM to an unbeaten home record.
Then, in the 1982-83 season, with Oviedo as Coach and Contesti as President, the team earned its fourth promotion to the Primera Division. That happened with three weeks remaining in the season, when RCDM went to Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu stadium to play “Castilla” (Real Madrid B), needing only a draw to secure promotion.
But after conceding 1-0 to Castilla, the RCDM players and 5,000 Bermellone fans waited and listened to the radio broadcast of the remaining eight minutes of the Coruña-Rayo Vallecano game on the Bernabeu turf. Fortunately, Coruña won to help Bermellone side return to the top flight for the fourth time in its history. However, after the ensuing season Mallorca dropped back down to the second tier in a difficult season with coach Marcel Domingo. In that season, RCDM employed its first Northern Irish player, Gerry Armstrong.
The Club spent two seasons in the Segunda A division, before winning its fifth ascent to the Primera Division under the leadership of Benito Joanet and Llorenç Serra Ferrer in the 1985-86 season. The team won 2-1 away at Logroño, with goals from Magdaleno and Luis Garcia in front of 8,500 noisily-travelling Mallorcans.
And, in the team’s return to the Primera Division in the 1986-87 season, RCDM was the cinderella story of the league by finishing only one point away from qualifying for the UEFA tournament, in the only year that a playoff format was used. In the following 1987-88 season, the team again dropped down. Coach Serra Ferrer was replaced by Frenchman Lucien Müller, who could not avoid relegation away to Oviedo.
The 1988-89 season brought change in the form of Yugoslav coach Iván Brzic, only to be replaced by Llorenç Serra Ferrer. Serra Ferrer provide the right formula, and just like that, RCDM earned its sixth promotion to the top league. But for the first time, the team celebrated the triumph at home, against Espanyol. As part of the two-leg playoff, Espanyol won the first leg at home 1-0 in Barcelona; but in front of a sell-out crowd at the Lluis Sitjar, RCDM would not be beaten, and won the playoff on goals from the feet of two local boys: Nadal and Vidal. The celebration carried on into the night and was absolutely spectacular.
And so, the decade of the 1980s ended with the team in the Primera Division, thanks to a triumphant season in which RCDM conceded the fewest goals in all of the Segunda Division.
STRUGGLING IN THE SECOND DIVISION
After hiring José Luis Oltra in 2013, to try and steer the team back into the first division, RCDM started the season with three defeats and Oltra was fired in the middle of the season. He was replaced by Lluís Carreras, who only lasted several more games before being replaced by the duo of Javier Olaizolaand Pep Alomar, who narrowily escaped demotion in the final three league games.
Then, in 2014, the Balearic club announced Miquel Soler as the coach at the beginning of the summer, only for new GM Dudu Aouate to remove Soler and bring in the Russian, Valeri Karpin. Under a Board led by Lorenzo Serra Ferrer, the Karpin-coached 2014-15 team struggled through to winter, and goalkeeper Dudu Aouate was dismissed.
Then, after five consecutive victories, the Bermellone club catapulted up into the middle of the table, when Lorenzo Serra Ferrer sold his shares to German Utz Claassen, who then became the majority shareholder. As that shareholder, Claassen replaced Karpin with Miquel Soler, yet the team still struggled through the season and again had to salvage the season at the very end.
So, in 2015, his first year as President, Utz Claassen and GM Miguel Ángel Nadal brought Albert Ferrer in to coach an overhauled roster, complete with some 15 new players, allowing youth and new players alike to compete for minutes. As many of those newcomers were free agents, the Club did not have to pay the exorbitant transfer fees that saw them near the red-zone in seasons past. Nonetheless, the new team failed to gel and made it to the winter break in the drop zone. Albert Ferrer was ousted, and Pepe Galvez was brought in.
A BREATH OF HOPE
On January 4, 2016, American Robert Sarver became the largest shareholder of the Bermellone Club with a substantial group investment, and he immediately named Maheta Molango the Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. And, after several more unfavorable performances, Molango replaced Pepe Gálvez with the experienced coach Fernando Vázquez, who had coached RCDM in the first division in 1999.
Vázquez was instructed to salvage the season in the second division, so that the team could compete for promotion in the 2016/17 season. Additionally, with the new capital, RCDM signed Lago Junior and Diogo Salomao in the winter market to try and bolster the roster. Finally, with life in the balance, the team earned survival in the Second Division by beating Valladolid 3-1 away at Valladolid and with the help of UD Almería tying Ponferradina.
In the middle of 2016, RCDM brought in a new technical director, shed twelve bodies from the roster, and brought in six experienced players.
On June 4, 2017, RCDM was relegated to Segunda División B after a draw against already relegated Mirandés. The club spent 36 years between first and second division.
The first stadium, called Buenos Aires, was inaugurated on March 25, 1916, with a 0–8 loss against Barcelona. And, on June 28, 1916, Spanish king Alfonso XIII de Borbón honored the team with the title Real Sociedad, and the team came to be known as Real Sociedad Alfonso XIII Foot-Ball Club.
In 1917, the Catalan Federation admitted Real Sociedad Alfonso XIII into the Catalan Championship tournament. The Mallorcan team reached the final in Barcelona, where they played against FC Palafrugell, and won 3-1, their first title.
And so, the Mallorcan club tried to broaden its sporting repertoire by incorporating a cycling team in 1919.
This coupled with the influence of the Second Spanish Republic caused the club to change its name to Club Deportivo Mallorca. Still with that name in 1945, the club inaugurated Es Fortínas the new stadium of the Balearic club. But, during that same season and in honor of the man who had started working and preparing that ground three years prior, the club changed the name of the stadium Lluís Sitjar.
In the 1949-1950 season, under the presidency of Conde de Olocau, the club recouped the title of royal title of Real, and game to be known for the first time in its history, Real Club Deportivo Mallorca, the same name that has withstood history by remaining the current name.
In 1960, RCD Mallorca earned its first promotion to the "División de Honor" under the tutelage of coach Juan Carlos Lorenzo and president Jaime Rosselló. In 1964, RCD Mallorca again earned promotion, this time to the Primera Division, under coach Cesar Rodriguez and president Baron de Vidal. Then, in 1969, RCD Mallorca earned its third promotion to the Primera Division, with coach Juancho Forneris and president Pau Servera.
HISTORIC UPS AND DRASTIC DOWNS
This decade produced three promotions to the Primera Division, including the first in Club history. However, it also produced the same number of relegations.
The scorer of the first goal for RCD Mallorca in the Primera Division was Joan Forteza. He was the only player to survive the roster changes from the previous season after President Jaime Roselló Pascual dismissed all other members of the roster. Meanwhile, the coach of that 1960´s squad was Argentine Juan Carlos Lorenzo.
He led the team into the Primera Division all the way from the depths of the third division, for the first time on April 17, 1960. It was a mere 44 years since the club was founded under the name of "Alfonso XIII FBC."
The members of the roster that would come to be known as the architects that earned the Club´s first promotion into the highest category of Spanish soccer are: Zamora, Vendrell, Febrer, Arqué, Diego, Cobo, Magín, Juanele, Guillamón, Bolao, Boixet, Ladaria, Forteza, Garcés, Currucale, Gassó, Martínez, Lorenzo, Villamide, Sureda, Oviedo, Rodríguez II, Czoka, Mir, and Laguardia.
RCD Mallorca was one of only 16 professional teams to compete in this top division. And the team reinforced by picking up players from FC Barcelona, among others, where the likes of Haro, Davoine, Irusqueta and Flotats all arrived. This first season in the top division ended with RCD Mallorca in ninth place of the sixteen total teams, and coach Lorenzo did not last through the season, just like the president, who was replaced by Sir Lorenzo Munar.
In the following season, the team finished eleventh. And so, with many ups and downs, RCD Mallorca did not last more than three years in the top echelon of Spanish soccer. The team dropped into the second division until 1964-65, when it rose up again. But, in that day in age, the only direct promotion came via winning the Segunda Division, while the second-place finisher had to play in the playoff for promotion.
In the 1965-66 season, RCD Mallorca dropped back down to the Segunda Division, after a tumultuous season in the locker room. Juan Forteza, an eleven-year player with the Club, left for Lleida. Other players followed suit and left for different clubs, and the team finished in fifth place in the return to the Segunda Division.
Then, in the 1967-68 season, Juan Carlos Lorenzo replaced Dauder as coach. But after failing to win promotion, Lorenzo was cast aside in April.
Fortunately, 1969´s coaching duo of Juan Carlos Forneris and Sergio Rodriguez led the team back to the top-flight. But, that joy was short-lived, as the team found itself in last place the following year. The club was back into the Segunda Division, and worse, in a spiraling crisis, institutionally and athletically, which would take decades to fix.
STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE
After the Club´s last descent from the Primera Division into the Segunda Division, a truly devastating decade began.
As the years went up in number, Mallorca´s category went down. In 1974-75, the Club dropped down to the Tercera Division, and like that, the Club was immersed in the most profound athletic and institutional crisis in its history. The recently created "Segunda B" division did not solve anything, for the Club qualified 18th in that division in 1977-78, resulting in demotion to the third division. RCD Mallorca was about to disappear.
In November 1977, RCD Mallorca became the first club in Spanish soccer in which the players enclosed themselves in the locker room, demanding payment of their salaries. Previously, the rights of all of the roster had been auctioned off. The bid was then deserted because nobody launched any offer for any player.
And, the forces of nature united to save the Club from dissolving. In the 1979-80 season, RCD Mallorca topped the Tercera Division and won promotion to that newly created Segunda B Division, which was a significant improvement in the Club´s precarious institutional position.
DEFEAT AND TRIUMPH
RCD Mallorca started the 1980s trying to leave behind the tumultuous decade before, where the team jostled between the Segunda A division (second), Segunda B (third), and Tercera Divisions (fourth). The arrival of President Miquel Contestí provided hope, as the team immediately won promotion to the Segunda A division in the 1980-81 season. That impressive team was trained by Antonio Oviedo, who guided RCDM to an unbeaten home record.
Then, in the 1982-83 season, with Oviedo as Coach and Contesti as President, the team earned its fourth promotion to the Primera Division. That happened with three weeks remaining in the season, when RCDM went to Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu stadium to play “Castilla” (Real Madrid B), needing only a draw to secure promotion.
But after conceding 1-0 to Castilla, the RCDM players and 5,000 Bermellone fans waited and listened to the radio broadcast of the remaining eight minutes of the Coruña-Rayo Vallecano game on the Bernabeu turf. Fortunately, Coruña won to help Bermellone side return to the top flight for the fourth time in its history. However, after the ensuing season Mallorca dropped back down to the second tier in a difficult season with coach Marcel Domingo. In that season, RCDM employed its first Northern Irish player, Gerry Armstrong.
The Club spent two seasons in the Segunda A division, before winning its fifth ascent to the Primera Division under the leadership of Benito Joanet and Llorenç Serra Ferrer in the 1985-86 season. The team won 2-1 away at Logroño, with goals from Magdaleno and Luis Garcia in front of 8,500 noisily-travelling Mallorcans.
And, in the team’s return to the Primera Division in the 1986-87 season, RCDM was the cinderella story of the league by finishing only one point away from qualifying for the UEFA tournament, in the only year that a playoff format was used. In the following 1987-88 season, the team again dropped down. Coach Serra Ferrer was replaced by Frenchman Lucien Müller, who could not avoid relegation away to Oviedo.
The 1988-89 season brought change in the form of Yugoslav coach Iván Brzic, only to be replaced by Llorenç Serra Ferrer. Serra Ferrer provide the right formula, and just like that, RCDM earned its sixth promotion to the top league. But for the first time, the team celebrated the triumph at home, against Espanyol. As part of the two-leg playoff, Espanyol won the first leg at home 1-0 in Barcelona; but in front of a sell-out crowd at the Lluis Sitjar, RCDM would not be beaten, and won the playoff on goals from the feet of two local boys: Nadal and Vidal. The celebration carried on into the night and was absolutely spectacular.
And so, the decade of the 1980s ended with the team in the Primera Division, thanks to a triumphant season in which RCDM conceded the fewest goals in all of the Segunda Division.
STRUGGLING IN THE SECOND DIVISION
After hiring José Luis Oltra in 2013, to try and steer the team back into the first division, RCDM started the season with three defeats and Oltra was fired in the middle of the season. He was replaced by Lluís Carreras, who only lasted several more games before being replaced by the duo of Javier Olaizolaand Pep Alomar, who narrowily escaped demotion in the final three league games.
Then, in 2014, the Balearic club announced Miquel Soler as the coach at the beginning of the summer, only for new GM Dudu Aouate to remove Soler and bring in the Russian, Valeri Karpin. Under a Board led by Lorenzo Serra Ferrer, the Karpin-coached 2014-15 team struggled through to winter, and goalkeeper Dudu Aouate was dismissed.
Then, after five consecutive victories, the Bermellone club catapulted up into the middle of the table, when Lorenzo Serra Ferrer sold his shares to German Utz Claassen, who then became the majority shareholder. As that shareholder, Claassen replaced Karpin with Miquel Soler, yet the team still struggled through the season and again had to salvage the season at the very end.
So, in 2015, his first year as President, Utz Claassen and GM Miguel Ángel Nadal brought Albert Ferrer in to coach an overhauled roster, complete with some 15 new players, allowing youth and new players alike to compete for minutes. As many of those newcomers were free agents, the Club did not have to pay the exorbitant transfer fees that saw them near the red-zone in seasons past. Nonetheless, the new team failed to gel and made it to the winter break in the drop zone. Albert Ferrer was ousted, and Pepe Galvez was brought in.
A BREATH OF HOPE
On January 4, 2016, American Robert Sarver became the largest shareholder of the Bermellone Club with a substantial group investment, and he immediately named Maheta Molango the Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. And, after several more unfavorable performances, Molango replaced Pepe Gálvez with the experienced coach Fernando Vázquez, who had coached RCDM in the first division in 1999.
Vázquez was instructed to salvage the season in the second division, so that the team could compete for promotion in the 2016/17 season. Additionally, with the new capital, RCDM signed Lago Junior and Diogo Salomao in the winter market to try and bolster the roster. Finally, with life in the balance, the team earned survival in the Second Division by beating Valladolid 3-1 away at Valladolid and with the help of UD Almería tying Ponferradina.
In the middle of 2016, RCDM brought in a new technical director, shed twelve bodies from the roster, and brought in six experienced players.
On June 4, 2017, RCDM was relegated to Segunda División B after a draw against already relegated Mirandés. The club spent 36 years between first and second division.
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