Voulgaris: “The limit is promotion” as Castellón lead Segunda

Haralabos Voulgaris, owner of Castellón, took charge of the club in July 2022 with the aim of bringing it to the top flight “in five or six years”. As MARCA reports, the plan is already paying off: in his fifth season, the team are currently leading in Segunda.

The Canadian businessman also explains how he has reshaped the club’s recruitment. He has introduced a squad-building method that does away with the traditional scouting role and instead relies on a proprietary data algorithm. “The data are the starting point for almost everything we do in the transfer market,” he says, defending that the approach has helped identify players outside the usual radar of the Spanish professional market.

Algorithm over scouting

According to MARCA, that formula has enabled Castellón to revalue talents internally and quickly move up, keeping the team very much in the mix at the top of LaLiga Hypermotion.

The goal: promotion

Voulgaris makes the target unmistakable: “The limit is promotion, there’s no point pretending otherwise.” He adds that, to compete against clubs with bigger budgets, the strategy has to be rooted in selling players: “We have to be a selling club to compete with others that have more income.”

He finishes with a personal reflection on ownership and identity: “People in Spain feel the club belongs to them; I didn’t understand that until I experienced it first-hand.” With Castellón at the summit, the next test will be whether the model—and the planned sales—again translate into the promotion he promised since 2022, per MARCA.