Messi’s Eldense Thrash Real Oviedo 4-1 for First Win as Owner

Less than 24 hours after Lionel Messi completed his takeover of CD Eldense, his new club thrashed Real Oviedo 4-1 in LaLiga 2, giving the Argentine his first win as an owner in Spain.

A dream start under the new owner

Lionel Messi has tasted his first win in Spain without wearing Barcelona’s crest. Roughly 24 hours after CD Eldense announced that the Argentine had completed the acquisition of 100 percent of the club, the Segunda División side thrashed Real Oviedo 4-1 at home in the eighth round of fixtures on Friday, October 2.

Messi watched his new team’s first match under his ownership from afar. He posted a photo on his Instagram story showing himself following the game on a laptop, and Fabrizio Romano shared the moment on social media, captioning the image of Messi tuned in with his new club’s 4-1 triumph.

What a start it proved to be. Against a Real Oviedo side only just relegated from La Liga, Eldense produced their most convincing performance of the season, and the timing could not have been more symbolic for a club beginning its most ambitious chapter in more than a century of history.

The takeover, completed on Thursday

The win came just one day after a landmark announcement. On Thursday, October 1, Club Deportivo Eldense confirmed that Messi had acquired the club outright. The Alicante-based side, founded in 1921, said the deal marked “a new and exciting stage in the more than one hundred years of history of the institution.”

In its statement, the club described the arrival of “one of the most important figures in the history of sport” as the start of a long-term project aimed at boosting the sporting, institutional and social development of CD Eldense, with the ambition to consolidate and grow in professional football while protecting the club’s roots and blue-and-red identity.

One administrative step remains: the club noted that the transaction is pending the required authorization from Spain’s CSD, the National Sports Council, under the terms established in the Sports Law. That formality aside, the Eldense era of Messi’s ownership has officially begun.

Second win of the season

The 4-1 result was only Eldense’s second victory of the campaign. Before the match, the club had drawn twice and lost four, sitting in the relegation places after seven games. The three points lifted them to 15th in the table with 8 points from 8 matches, giving the squad breathing room just as the new owner takes charge.

Real Oviedo were no pushovers on paper. Newly relegated from La Liga, they had opened the season with solid results, including a 2-0 win over Sporting Gijón and a 3-0 victory at Valladolid. That Eldense swept them aside so emphatically suggests a squad playing with new belief, even if one win cannot fix a season on its own.

The gap to the top remains substantial. Castellón lead the table with 19 points while Eibar sit second on 18, both well clear of Eldense. But the club’s stated ambition is promotion to La Liga, the division where Messi enjoyed most of his glory with Barcelona, and the win keeps that dream faintly alive.

Messi’s growing Spanish portfolio

The Eldense acquisition is not Messi’s first move into Spanish club ownership. About six months before the takeover, he invested in UE Cornellà, a fifth-tier side, beginning a project in his longtime home nation that is now expanding at speed.

The pattern is becoming clear. At 39, with his international career closing on October 6 at the Monumental, Messi is planning to stay deeply involved in football once he hangs up his boots. Ownership gives him a stake in the sport’s future rather than just a seat in the stands, and Eldense is by far the biggest piece of his portfolio so far.

It also shows how seriously he takes the project. Watching the Oviedo game on a laptop on his Instagram story the very next day, Messi signaled that this is no passive investment. He is following his club, publicly, from day one.

What the win changes

In sporting terms, one win changes little by itself. Eldense still have work to do to climb the Segunda División, and the division is famously unforgiving. But the psychological effect of a 4-1 thrashing in the first match under new ownership should not be underestimated.

New owners bring scrutiny, pressure and expectation. For the players to respond with a statement win in front of their new owner’s watching eyes suggests a squad ready to embrace the moment rather than shrink from it. The club’s institutional message about consolidation and growth has its first on-pitch evidence. It was also the club’s biggest win of the season so far, eclipsing the 1-0 away victory at Sporting Gijón in September.

There is a neat symmetry to the story too. Messi’s first Inter Miami goal came against Cruz Azul in a dramatic stoppage-time winner; his first match as Eldense owner produced a 4-1 home demolition. Beginnings suit him.

Full focus turns to Buenos Aires

For Messi personally, the Eldense euphoria is only a side story this week. He landed in Rosario on Friday morning to join the Argentina squad for his final international appearance, the October 6 farewell friendly against Benin at the Monumental, where an emotional night with more than 80,000 fans awaits.

The club-owner storyline will continue in the background while the world watches his last dance in the Albiceleste shirt. But when he returns to Inter Miami after the farewell, the Eldense project will be waiting, with a team that has just shown its new owner what it is capable of on its best day.

Spain has been good to Messi as a player. The early signs say it might be good to him as an owner too.

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