He told The Athletic in 2025<\/a> that Oviedo made him a hefty salary offer but he asked for the minimum contract allowed under La Liga rules (\u20ac90,000 a year). Ten per cent of all proceeds from jerseys bearing his name also goes to help fund the club\u2019s youth system.<\/p>\n\u201cThankfully, I\u2019ve had a successful career, so the last thing I wanted was to be a weight on my club,\u201d Cazorla said. \u201cI\u2019m delighted with these conditions \u2014 I\u2019d play for free, but the regulations must be respected.<\/p>\n
\u201cReturning here to Oviedo, where I dreamed of playing as a kid, was in my mind for a long time. Now I\u2019m back, trying to help where I can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oviedo almost went bust in 2012 before an international fundraising campaign raised the \u20ac2million (\u00a31.7m\/$2.1m) required to save it. Cazorla was among those to contribute, as were former Oviedo youth team players Juan Mata and Michu.<\/p>\n
Cazorla also made 81 appearances for Spain, winning the European Championship in 2008 and 2012.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Club World Cup, the Real Madrid coach and former Spain international Xabi Alonso offered Cazorla his congratulations.\u00a0\u201cThe first thing is to congratulate Oviedo,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel a little sorry for Mirandes too, because I have friends there. I\u2019m happy for my friend Santi Cazorla who had the great gesture of going back there at his age and I\u2019m sure he has been very influential for the promotion. Because of his charisma and because he has an impressive quality, he is a unique player\u201d<\/p>\n
(Photo: Juan Manuel Serrano Arce\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Arsenal midfielder Santi Cazorla has helped Real Oviedo earn promotion to La Liga for the first time…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[5407,1582,276,2961,4732,224,5337,128,5408],"class_list":{"0":"post-4077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-arsenal","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-liga","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-spain","16":"tag-villarreal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114724665246018047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}