Harburg plotted Cadiz’s path back to glory

“It’s been a good start to the season,” Cadiz minority shareholder Ben Harburg said in a recent interview with LaLiga Expert, conducted before their weekend win against Huesca.

“We were relegated a year and a half ago, so this is the second season we have been relegated in the second division. The first season when you are relegated is a tough season, because you bring a lot of contracts from the first division, and that is very tough.

“What basically happened was, anyone who was a good player would jump ship, because they didn’t want to go down to the second division, so we lost a lot of our best players overnight who found other clubs in the first division.

“And then all the people who weren’t actually first division players, but were earning salaries from the first division, stayed. So there were people who weren’t discouraged by what happened in the relegation zone, were getting first division prices, but were playing in the second division. This is a recipe for disaster.”

Born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Harburg spent his childhood bouncing between places like Michigan, Egypt, and Switzerland, but it was during his time living in El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain that he was exposed to soccer. After attending a Cadiz match in 1997, he fell in love with the beautiful game forever.

Over the next quarter century, Harburg made a name for himself in the world of finance, from China, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, to Germany while trading commodities and other stocks.

He is a managing partner at MSA Capital, a global investment firm with more than $2 billion in assets under management, and oversees investments in companies such as Palantir, Uber, and Airbnb.

After watching the Netflix series Sunderland ‘Til I Die, Harburg decided he needed to embark on a football ownership adventure. After plotting the 80 clubs in Spain’s top three divisions into an Excel spreadsheet and reviewing factors such as GDP per capita, city size and stadium capacity, he found that Cadiz offered the best value investment.

Harburg bought 6.5 percent of Cadiz shares in October 2021, becoming an observer on the Board of Directors.

“One of the funny things that happened in the Sunderland story was the team got relegated from the first division to the second division, and then the following season, they got relegated from the Championship to League One. You have a team that has the fifth biggest stadium in England, it’s just a wild position to be in.

“Last year was a tough year for us because we had that kind of dynamic, so what we worked really hard on during the off-season was getting rid of a lot of the old players who maybe weren’t as motivated, who were maybe too far along in their careers, and overpaid.

“In the last days of the transfer window, we could end up losing many of them, unfortunately not all of them, and bringing in a lot of new players. And new players are very important in the Spanish second division, because you need young players, hungry players who work hard to be promoted again, compared to old players who hope to play at the first division level and be like prima donnas.”

Since joining Cadiz four years ago, Harburg has proven instrumental in the club’s globalization initiatives — from establishing their esports team to helping Cadiz grow from less than half a million to more than 18 million followers on social media, recruiting key players, to establishing an international academy.

And although Cadiz have moved from playing in the top flight to the second division, they have remained financially viable thanks to Harburg’s tutelage.

“We’ve freshened things up, we have a fresh goalkeeper and a relatively fresh front line. We still have some great veteran players, like Javier Ontiveros and Suso, others, but apart from that, it’s a pretty young squad, and the results are very good.

“I think we’re probably overachieving at the moment. I’m not entirely sure this will be our year to progress. But the squad has a very different feel to the last few years, where it felt like we were just running out of steam and trying to hang on at the end of the season and looking for a miracle win to keep us alive.

“This season, it feels like everything that happens is very systematic and predictable. It doesn’t feel like we’re stealing any wins. It feels like we’re playing at the level we should be. I think we’re in good shape. I don’t know if I could have predicted we’d be promoted this season, but that kind of catharsis and cleansing process has begun.”