Espanyol's new American owner wants Spanish club to build a winning mentality

“That’s the ambition that we have: To change the mentality that we are always, always deserving to win,” Alan Pace said on Tuesday.

It was his first press conference at the team's stadium since buying Espanyol this summer and becoming its new chairman.

The move came five years after Pace made his first major venture into European soccer when he bought English club Burnley through Velocity Sports Partners, the sports arm of his ALK Capital investment firm.

“I would love for this club as well as any club that I’m associated with to have the ambition to win the Champions League, but that’s an ambition and it may happen well after I’m dead,” Pace said about Espanyol. “But we better put the things in place that make that possible. We need to change the mentality to say that is what we want.”

In the short-term, he said success for Espanyol would be to become one of the “top six” clubs in Spain, which would most likely put it in European competitions.

The club has struggled in recent seasons, battling back from two relegations and barely avoiding going down a third time last season. It has made a good start to this season, sitting ninth in La Liga after just two losses in eight games.

Former NFL star J.J. Watt, who Pace called a “good friend,” is also involved in the new ownership group that purchased the controlling share of Espanyol in July from Chinese group Rastar, which became a minority stakeholder.

Espanyol has not made public the financial details of its sale.

Opening up to the world

One key to closing the gap with crosstown rival Barcelona, Pace said, was taking a cue from Espanyol's fierce rival and look to grow abroad.

Pace said he hopes his expertise can help make Espanyol think bigger, and maybe just bring more people to its stadium when on vacation as well.

“Barça have grown thanks to people not from Barcelona more than the locals,” Pace said. “The tourists that come, they are not necessarily Barça fans, they want to see the best football possible. A lot of tourists come here and they have to at least have an opportunity to get to know us, to visit us."

Pace, 57, said he had the “dream” of one day owning a club in Barcelona ever since he fell in love with the city while going to business school in Barcelona in the early 1990s. He made lasting friendships and said his family spent summers in Barcelona. His oldest daughter married someone she met there.

He said those “big, big ties” to Barcelona definitely steered him to look here when he wanted to expand his investments.

Pace, a former Wall Street banker, said he and his team were prepared if Burnley and Espanyol were to qualify for the same European competition. UEFA rules prohibit the same owner having two teams in the same Europe-wide competition.

“I'd have to leave one of the clubs, if not both of them at the same time,” he said. “There are plans in place about what we would have to do.”

Besides his time in charge of Burnley, Pace bought and ran Major League Soccer team Real Salt Lake from 2006-08 and turned it around.

Espanyol's 125-year history

Pace said he wanted to build on the “history” of Espanyol, which is celebrating the 125th anniversary of its founding this year.

One of the original teams of La Liga, Espanyol has spent most of its history in the first division. It has more than 32,000 club members, known as “parakeets” for the team's blue-and-white colors, and its modern stadium on the south side of Barcelona has been selected to host games in the 2030 World Cup.

Espanyol's greatest success has come in the Copa del Rey, a competition it has won four times. It also reached two Europa League finals, losing both.

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