January 25th 2020. A year ago today we launched ELXIIDEAL, a media project that has step by step turned into a ‘small’ sports media website formed by four journalists that look forward to professionalize the site in the industry. A lot of things have happened since that day. There was no ‘virus’ yet and everything was “normal”. It was another life.
Our first match recap was marked by disastrous Setién´s Barcelona first loss in LaLiga with him on the bench. They fell to Valencia at Mestalla in the first glimpse of the short and poor time that he would spend as Barça´s coach. “Barça wreck at Mestalla”, was our headline. The next month and a half of ‘freedom’ before lockdown came along with the match analysis from the most outstanding fixtures every weekend from which stood out particularly two: Atlético´s win against Liverpool in the first leg of the UCL round of 16, as it was written right from the Wanda Metropolitano vip area; and their heroic win in the second leg, as that is the last memory we have from ‘the old football’ with packed stadiums. Nothing was the same afterwards (and it is not yet).
Total break:
Health situation forced to stop every sport competition almost when we had started, but every change of plans comes with opportunities. Our YouTube channel began to run before planned in summer and we posted up to three videos those months without sports on TV: the first one a personal one to get to know Guillermo´s trajectory; another one to talk about LaLiga´s table at the time of the break (we did not know yet if the league would resume); and a third one with our partner and friend Manuel García from his YouTube channel Cómo Has Llegado Aquí where we had a fun football quiz that people still like to watch. The goal was to keep going despite the circumstances, and we did.
The return of football:
Bundesliga was the first league to announce their return halfway May, which we made the most out by covering the best games from German football. Haaland took us back to the field with the first goal of ‘the new life’. German oasis. Spanish LaLiga resumed a few weeks later and that brought good news to the site, as new members joined in to grow the project.

The family grows:
Manuel Aguayo and José Manuel Calviño joined the website in order to increase our games´ cover and YouTube channel content with LaLiga´s return. The games we missed so much for three eternal months were now taking place everyday (better this way). There was a lot of work to do.
Our interviews:
Once LaLiga was over and Madrid won the title, we had a couple special interviews in our YouTube channel: Santiago Aragón, ex professional footballer in the first division for several teams such as CD Logroñés, Real Madrid and Real Zaragoza; and Manolo Lama, one of the most famous sports journalist in Spain.
With Santi we talked about his trajectory as a player, the recent LaLiga´s conquer by Real Madrid and his current role as The Whites scouter for the academy.
With Manolo we talked about the sports journalist´s job, focused on specific events such as covering the Olympics. His career, his impressions on LaLiga´s return, the VAR tool, and his opinion on the final 8 format for the UCL last year to resume. It was a pleasure to have both of them with us.
The new website:
Rafael Berrezueta Palacios joined us at the end of summer to increase our international football offer. Moreover, the addition of digital advisor Pablo Yglesias gave a quality jump to the website design which with we expect to keep increasing our viewers numbers who decide to share their passion with us.
A year later, we try to cover in different formats the most outstanding events from the main European leagues and from the best basketball league in the world, the NBA. We do so with the excitement and effort to keep growing and offering a high quality content for everyone who lands in our website and who hopefully stays with us.
Our goal is to continue improving everyday, as we have been doing during this year of work. Thanks for being there, from the entire ELXIIDEAL squad.