Former Burnley owner runs the Spanish Accrington
11/19/2024 09:43 AM
Mike Garlick, the former chairman of Burnley, in February embarked on a fresh footballing challenge — to help lead Antequera up the Spanish league ladder, just as he had previously supported Sean Dyche in achieving the Lancashire club's longest spell of top-flight tenancy since the 1960s.
"I didn't want to buy a big club," Garlick says, sitting in
the reception of the hotel across the road from the stadium. "The most
enjoyable thing about Burnley wasn't the day you won something or got promotion
but the actual journey — and I wanted a journey. I looked at Antequera and
thought, 'We could go on a journey here.' "
Garlick, who stepped down as Burnley chairman after the
club's purchase by ALK Capital in December 2020 and left the board altogether
last year, adds: "I knew I'd miss the buzz of football and I got offered a lot
of different clubs in England but I'm a Burnley fan so I wasn't that keen.
"We already had a house in Spain, near Marbella, and my wife
speaks Spanish so why not here? I can get on a plane to Malaga, jump in a car
and be here really quickly. On top of that, they'd been promoted in three of
the past five years so they are clearly on an upward trend."
This last point is highlighted by the match, a 2-0 victory over Ibiza which lifts Antequera into second
place in the southern section of the Primera Federación, Spain's third
division. There are 1,793 fans in El Maulí's two stands — not bad for a club
which was attracting only a couple of hundred spectators half a decade ago.
The Spanish Accrington
His Burnley experience is much-mentioned by the locals,
though as Garlick remarks, Antequera is closer in size to Accrington (albeit
with a series of Unesco-recognised megalithic monuments absent on the
Lancashire landscape).
"I've compared it to Accrington as the population's just
over 40,000 so if we did get into La Liga one day, we'd be one of the
smallest-ever towns in there," he says. "Burnley was the smallest town in the
Premier League — you've got 78,000 people there. It's a dream but why not try
for it?"
"Seven years out of eight in the Premier League for a club
like Burnley is amazing. Our budget was often the lowest, if not the lowest, in
the bottom three for all that time. In the end it started to catch up with us.
Qualifying for Europe [in 2018] was a massive highlight although looking back,
that was a tricky point because it came too soon. We probably didn't sign as
many players as we'd have hoped that summer and from then on, the relationship
[with both Dyche and supporters] became a bit strained."
"One of the things that made me go in the end was I was a
multi-millionaire playing in a multi-billionaire's league. Every season was
just, 'Can we stay up again?' For me as an owner, but for the players and Sean
as well, how long can you keep that mentality going?"
There is a passage in Arthur Hopcraft's 1968 book The
Football Man, written about an earlier Burnley chairman, Bob Lord, which
says: "The question now is whether such a man and such a club have not been
overtaken by the sheer cost of football at its most competitive." The same
applies today on a much-magnified scale, as Garlick's point about billionaires
underlines. "If I was a multi-billionaire, I'd still be at Burnley — that is a
fact," he says.
Garlick, who grew up idolising Leighton James and Martin
Dobson, is now directing clubs on the Iberian peninsula. Is there some sadness
in that? "Football now is a global game" is his measured response. "I'm here as
a British guy owning a club in Spain and one in Gibraltar. People move around
more; businesses are more international now. I just think it's the way it is
going to go.
"Look how it's evolved in the Premier League in the last 10
to 15 years. Back then you had maybe two or three [US owners], now it is more
than half [once The Friedkin Group's takeover of Everton is completed]."
As for Burnley's American owners, ALK's leveraged buyout of
the club caused dismay among many supporters. Since then, they have assumed the
role of yo-yo club, with two relegations and one promotion, and find themselves
back in the Sky Bet Championship at present. "I think overall they've done a
good job," Garlick says of ALK. "They've made mistakes, but I made mistakes.
They are still on a journey. I hope we can get back in the Premier League this
season. I think we've got a good chance. We've got a good manager."
