Eleven Real Betis players walked onto the pitch before their match against Getafe on 17 September 2026. Beside them were eleven companions, wearing the club’s green and white. This time, the escorts were some of Betis’ oldest members.
The invitation gave older supporters a place in a ceremony usually associated with childhood. It also offered a different way to think about the relationship between a club and the people who sustain it. Supporters spend years giving football their time and affection. Here was an opportunity for football to give something memorable back.
The image remains worth spending time with after the match has passed. Walking onto a pitch alongside a player can be a dream at any age. A club has the means to make that dream possible.
A place in the Betis family
In its announcement, the Real Betis Foundation connected the Getafe occasion to its Older People’s Week, scheduled for 28 September–4 October. The programme included letters delivered to a care home through De Béticos a Abuelos, bringing generations into contact, and visits by older groups to La Cartuja. The foundation described its purpose as recognising older people’s contribution and keeping them actively involved in the Betis community.
Participation also extends to playing. A separate club announcement about Walking Football traces the project to 2022. Its advertised eligibility was women over 40 and men over 50, all club members. Running and balls above head height are prohibited, and contact is penalised. The adapted game offers another route into football as people grow older.
Those routes matter because people do not all want the same relationship with their club. One person may want to play again; another may enjoy exchanging letters or visiting the stadium. An invitation onto the pitch adds an extraordinary experience to those more regular forms of connection. Together, they give belonging somewhere to go.
The children beside the players
There is a useful historical connection to the familiar sight of children accompanying footballers. At the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan, FIFA and UNICEF worked together to promote children’s rights through the Say Yes for Children campaign. The Japan Committee for UNICEF’s contemporary materials record the campaign’s connection with the tournament.
A UEFA report published on 11 June 2002 described children accompanying each player at every match. It connected that visible role to football’s responsibility towards children, including their access to recreation and primary education. The walk onto the pitch carried a message beyond the coming game.
This establishes what the partnership did at that tournament; it does not establish when player escorts were first invented. What makes the connection interesting is the use of a few highly visible minutes to recognise people whose lives extend far beyond the stadium.
Betis’ invitation can be read as widening that possibility to another generation. That is an interpretation of the two occasions, rather than evidence of a formal connection between their organisers. Children retain every reason to be there. Older supporters have reasons of their own.
Japan’s supporters discover a new role
In Japan, a related idea has taken root through Be supporters!, an initiative begun by Suntory Wellness in December 2020 and promoted nationally with the J.League from 2021. It invites older people, including care-home residents and people living with dementia, to support local clubs. Its guiding phrase translates as moving from being supported to becoming someone who supports.
In an August 2025 announcement, the J.League reported participation across approximately 230 facilities, involving around 10,000 people cumulatively. Dating those figures matters: they describe the programme at that point, rather than its present size.
The league’s earlier account, from September 2022, included an 86-year-old who began studying Spanish after becoming a fan of a Spanish player, and a 90-year-old who normally used a walking frame taking steps independently to see a favourite player’s photograph. These are individual experiences reported by the organisers, rather than evidence of a general clinical effect.
The language-learning story is particularly telling. A new interest opens a door into another country and its language. There is a player to follow, a match to anticipate, something to talk about with somebody else. Curiosity continues to make demands on the world, long after the age at which society tends to expect it.
Betis and Be supporters! approach this relationship from different directions. In Seville, established members received an invitation to share the players’ entrance. In Japan, people accustomed to receiving assistance gain an opportunity to encourage a team. Both allow older people to take part in the present life of football.
Sustaining the people who sustain a club
Environmental action remains essential to football’s future. The sport depends on habitable places, usable pitches and communities able to live with a changing climate. Alongside that work, social sustainability asks how people remain connected to the institutions they care about through different stages of life.
The J.League includes Be supporters! within the People dimension of its sustainability activities. It is a useful reminder that sustaining a club also involves sustaining relationships: making room for someone whose mobility, circumstances or daily routine has changed.
A supporter can stay with a club longer than any player, manager or owner. Across those years, the contribution takes many forms, from buying tickets to bringing another generation to a first match. The club becomes part of family memory. Recognition of that commitment can be deeply personal, especially when it offers a new experience rather than simply commemorating the past.
Other clubs can find versions of these ideas that fit their own communities. A matchday invitation can sit beside regular contact with care homes or opportunities for adapted play. The arrangements need to follow the people involved: their wishes, their comfort and the assistance that makes participation possible. A shared walk onto the pitch becomes more meaningful when there are ways to remain connected afterwards.
A memory for life
We often describe a child’s visit to a stadium as a memory for life. The phrase belongs just as naturally to an experience made much later. The value of a new memory does not diminish because someone already has decades of memories behind them.
For the older members invited to accompany Betis’ players, the occasion made room for another chapter in their relationship with the club. We cannot know what each person felt without asking them. But we can recognise the generosity of making that space available, and the possibilities it leaves for others.
Football has long understood the joy of giving a child a first glimpse of the pitch. It can keep creating those moments throughout a person’s life. Dreams have no age.