Fifteen business days. This is the deadline that the Rayo Vallecano Foundation has to solve the security problems of the Sports City in which all the youth teams train and most of the Madrid Club teams compete. If it does not correct the existing deficiencies in the different fields, the Madrid City Council “will initiate the corresponding sanctions”, as announced by the delegate councilor for Sports, Sonia Cea.
The person responsible for Sports has thus responded in the branch commission to the councilor of Más Madrid, Mar Barberán, who requested to know the measures that the Consistory is applying “to guarantee that the conditions of the Ciudad Deportiva del Rayo are optimal and, above all “safe” because “The deterioration is so brutal that it becomes unsafe for athletes.”
The plot was awarded in 2006 to the Rayo Vallecano Foundation, as explained by Barberán. The Sports City opened its doors in June 2010according to the Foundation itself. This concession means that the Club has to assume the responsibility of maintaining the facility in optimal conditions of operation, conservation, safety and cleanliness, but “nothing could be further from the truth,” according to Barberán. He criticizes that “the dirt is little more than permanent” in a space “in a poor state”, with accesses full of “holes or even filled in in an almost improvised way, which may be more dangerous because you can put your foot in a hole or take one of those fillings.” The councilor for Más Madrid has even asked for the contract to be terminated if the Foundation does not guarantee security on these soccer fields.
Aware of these deficiencies, the Sports area of ​​the City Council has analyzed the concession and assessed the different actions that they can take against the concessionaire. The first decision they have made, as reported by Sonia Cea in the commission, is to send a request to the Foundation to adopt “immediately” the necessary measures to correct the deficiencies within a period of 15 business days. If they do not comply, “the corresponding sanctions” will begin, the delegate councilor has warned. He has assured that the municipal government will be “very vigilant so that the Foundation meets all its commitments and obligations as concessionaires.”
Precisely, On October 19, a 13-year-old boy suffered an injury in the 7th minute of a match between the Rayo Vallecano Foundation and the Pozo Sport Sports Section. The president of the latter, Javier Piñero, denounced the state of the field on social networks: “Shameful and impractical for football.” The young man has undergone surgery to tear ligaments after putting his foot in one of the holes in the field. And today the councilor of Más Madrid did the same, bringing the matter to the commission. This happened in field 2 but in field 1, where the pre-young children, children aged 6 and 7, train, “there is a light post with huge screws that are not even protected,” he warns. According to Barberán, “they cannot be practicing sports with the level of insecurity they have right now.”
Along with the surveillance that the City Council will carry out, Cea has announced that in the coming days he will carry out “visits to the facility with technicians from the Sports area to assess the condition.” Furthermore, he has requested a meeting with the Madrid Football Federation and with the user clubs of the Ciudad Deportiva to learn first-hand about their claims.