New York’s next mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is the man of the hour. On Tuesday, in the local elections of the most populated city in the United States with a unique profile: immigrant, Muslim and declared socialist, he will now be the youngest councilor since the 19th century (34 years old). Donald Trump’s nightmares made flesh.
The profiles that the media publish these days highlight his love for sport and, especially, for football, but not the American one, but what they call there. soccera hobby that apparently comes from the Indian branch of his family (he is the son of director Mira Nair and is Ugandan on his father’s side, the university professor Mahmood Mamdani), for which he became a total fan of the United Kingdom Premier. He declares himself an Arsenal fan, claims that his favorite player is Thierry Henry and has been holding children’s competitions in depressed areas for years, because he is now mayor, but he has been in the New York Assembly since 2020.
Until now, the democrat’s known connection with Spanish football was his confessed admiration for Ronaldo Nazario (especially in his spells at Real Madrid and Barcelona) and his inspiration in Cesc Fábregas, whom he claims would be his “favorite captain.” But in the last few hours a much deeper and more beautiful bond has been revealed: Mamdani has been a member of Real Oviedo since 2012.
“I just bought a share, possibly I am the first shareholder of Real Oviedo based in Maine?” the now 21-year-old politician wrote in November 2012 on social media. He was then at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, earning a degree in Africana Studies and co-founding the student branch of Students for Justice in Palestine, the origin of his social activism. He graduated two years later.
In his message on The club was in Second B.
In that capital increase carried out at the end of 2012, which guaranteed the survival of the club and the subsequent purchase of Carlos Slim’s Grupo Carso, the Real Oviedo fans became involved and this movement ended with more than 40,000 people from 125 different countries being shareholders of the blue club, explains the EFE Agency.
“By the way, I feel terribly ashamed, I didn’t answer him,” Lowe, a journalist for The Guardian and a big fan of the northern Spanish club, when he found out that Mamdani bought a share of Real Oviedo in 2012.
Real Oviedo, given the victory of its partner, has publicly congratulated the democrat. Through social networks, he also thanked him for his support, attaching the message confirming the purchase of shares in the club and reminding him that New York now had much more of the color blue, just one of Mamdani’s campaign bets, but because it is that of the Mets, the baseball team from the Big Apple.
Today Oviedo is the penultimate classified in LaLiga EA Sports (First Division), with 8 units, after two victories and two draws in the 11 rounds played in this return to the highest category of Spanish football, achieved at the end of the 2024-2025 season.
In love and quarrelsome
Mamdani has clearly shown himself to be in love with football, a hobby that has been a pillar in his life and to which he has carried his causes for a better world, too. In various interviews he has recalled that he stayed up late to watch European league matches (due to the time difference with the US and Europe) and, especially, his Arsenal. “Arsenal has been a fundamental part of my life and my identity. It is good preparation for being a social democrat,” he explains.
This sport has been such a vital reference for the social democrat – as he calls himself – that he even compared his political battle with the historical feat of Leicester City, a modest team that won the Premier nine years ago. “Every day more people join our campaign. And it is a campaign that started with only 1%. If I had to describe it as a recent surprise, I would say that it is the Leicester City of campaigns,” he explained. Another thing is that many in New York understood it.
Furthermore, in an interview, he gave details of how he already followed the games from Uganda, from where he left for the US when he was barely seven years old. He says he had images of Frenchman Arsène Wénger’s Arsenal on his fridge. 2003-04 season, for details. “Some of my first memories are of Kanu, of Lauren, of Kolo Touré, of Emmanuel Eboué, of Alex Song… Arsenal has been a fundamental part of my life and my identity (…). It is a good preparation to be a social democrat,” he declared then, recalling visits to the stadium with his uncle.
Memories and games and also political fighting is football for the new New York City councilor, who last month, in the middle of the election campaign, released a very powerful video under the title “Tell FIFA to put gambling above greed”, in view of the matches that are going to be held in the city next year, as one of the World Cup venues (divided between the US, Canada and Mexico).
The social democrat launched a collection of signatures asking the International Federation of Football Association (FIFA) to reserve 15% of the tickets for the inhabitants of New York for those matches, give them a discount, limit resale and not use dynamic prices, a strategy that is increasingly common in shows and other services sold on the internet in which the buyer is harmed by the lack of transparency. Basically, it allows the inhabitants of the host city to enjoy the spectacle of football.
In the video, he already explains that he is a huge fan and that is why he is “excited” about the appointment, but not everything goes. So with the jacket on the bench, he scores some right hands and filigrees (not bad), but at the same time he demands a little head.
Mamdani already knows what a World Cup is. “I went to South Africa in 2010. I know what the World Cup represents, which is the most popular tournament in the world, and also what it could be,” he also explained in an interview with in which he attacked the “continued commercialization of football” by managers such as FIFA itself, which “threatens to economically exclude those who make this sport so special.”
“In our fight to make America’s most expensive city affordable, we’re not limited to housing, child care and public transportation. We’re also covering the moments that bring so much joy to New Yorkers, like next year’s World Cup,” he added. That was last month.
Mamdani actually likes “all” sports. He was one of the founders of the Bronx Institute of Science team that played the first cricket league for schoolchildren, according to Indian media, when he started high school on North American soil, and he is also seen running the New York Marathon, at least in 2024.
