EDI VILLARREAL CF

Villarreal CF promotes sport among people with functional diversity. The Yellows integrated the School for People with Intellectual Disabilities (known in Spanish as EDI) into its sporting structure in the 2015/16 campaign, being one of the pioneering clubs in Spanish football to promote sporting activity for this group.

Villarreal CF currently has four EDI teams (Blue, Yellow, Green and Red) made up entirely of footballers with functional diversity, some of them coming from some of the special centres in the province of Castellón. The sporting practice serves as a leisure and fun activity, giving them the opportunity to represent their club.

Villarreal CF’s EDI teams train twice a week at the José Manuel Llaneza Training Ground and are fully integrated into the club’s structure. Unified Football is a sporting modality born in the heart of the Special Olympics and increasingly widespread in different countries around the world. Its objective is to bring together players with and without intellectual disabilities in the same team so that they can share values and rules in a unified way. To this end, a set of rules has been established which, among many other technical aspects, aims to ensure the honesty of the players during the competition.

Since the 2017/18 season, Villarreal CF has been competing in LALIGA GENUINE, a competition promoted by the LALIGA Foundation that brings together the best teams in Spain made up of players with functional diversity.