Sevilla – Osasuna

This match is important.

A Self-critique

Who are we?

a. A mid-table club with huge recent successes

b. A top club who is now in crisis

c. 11 men with a vague idea of football

The answer to this question probably depends on when we became fans of Sevilla. Fans who have come to the club in the last 6 years probably have a different perspective (if not a different answer) than those who have been around for a decade or more. Personally, I am constantly reassessing my understanding of the many narratives that are thrown out when discussing Sevilla’s place in La Liga. It’s appropriately hard for any Sevilla fan to hide his/her discontent with the current “underachieving” squad, even when this is exactly the achievement that Sevilla has had for decades. We must ask: by whose standards is this team to be judged? By those of the teams of recent years or by those of the last 4-5 decades of Sevilla football?

Real Sociedad – Sevilla

Here we go again! I’ve got good news and bad news.

Bad: we’re only 3 points above relegation.

Good: we’re only 6 points out of Champions League.

This year has seen more parity in La Liga than any I remember recently. The gap between 4th place and last is only 17 points. Thus, Sevilla still sit primed to qualify for Europa or even Champions if it can get its act together. About that act… we’re on an awful run of seven straight weeks without a win, which is why we’re currently sitting 12th. But a win today would boost us back up to 10th and slot us in only two points behind the low Europa qualification pace being set by the likes of Málaga, Atlético and Espanyol.

Michel is at the wheel now, and promptly enforced a No BS policy this week after Medel and Spahic got into it during a practice session. Neither will see the field today and were replaced on the roster by the long lost Guarente and Alexis. I’m busy at match time, but maybe a couple of you will be able to fill us in after the match??

Vamos!!!

A New Scapegoat?

We’ve reached an agreement for the rest of the season with Michel, the Getafe coach who was let go last summer when they barely escaped relegation. Will this help us?

Reading through several posts and comment sections today, one thought really stood out to me: Before 2007, we had coaches like Aragones, Camacho, and Juande, who were all great coaches but of Sevilla teams that didn’t aspire much higher than mid-table due to our modest rosters. Now that we have a roster that we feel is Champions League quality, we continue to hire managers that have never aspired to much more than modest, non-relegation success.

This summer it may come down to selling a player (Perotti?) in order to buy a coach with some pedigree. Without a sale, we will continue to incline to the mid-table in search of the next Juande. While this strategy with players works out sometimes (buy low and unknowns and develop them), “it works out sometimes” isn’t an appropriate philosophy for hiring a head coach. Hiring an aspiring but relatively unproven coach is akin to buying Acosta, except that we can’t loan out the coach when he fails to produce wins; we must fire him. This cycle must end.

Can we afford Rafa Benitez or a coach of similar experience and nerve? Surely the administration isn’t content to continue this trend of making the prudent and/or status-preserving hire (Jimenez, Alvarez, Manzano, Marcelino and Michel), and yet they sing praises every time we hire a new decent-yet-unheralded coach. If money is the object, maybe it’s time to sell so that we can buy good coaching.

But that doesn’t even begin to answer the harder questions: Where’s the passion? Where are the goals? How much falls on Marcelino and how much on the players? Who leads this team if the coach cannot?

Marcelino Fired

Draw your own conclusions, but this sucks (again). Since Juande: Jiménez, Álvarez, Manzano and now Marcelino. That’s four in five seasons.

Sevilla – Villarreal

Villarreal come south this week to the land of Flamenco. Sevilla, also renowned for its hatred of the letter S, isn’t having the best run of the season. I’ve lost count: six straight La Liga weeks without a win? That 2-6 Real Madrid match in which we played some of our best football but saw some of our worst finishing (and some of RM’s best of the season) still looms large as the most recent turning point.

The team is down on themselves as expected, but new faces could turn the tide. Babá and Cala are recent arrivals and likely to see minutes. Both could be game changers seeing how much diarrhea we’ve had at both ends lately (few goals scored, many against). Marcelino hasn’t sugarcoated a single thing through this whole stretch, calling himself and the occasional player out. VARAS has also done his fair share of “hecho pecho”-ing, saying that he knows a couple of his recent blunders have cost the team points. Today, his words were encouraging: ”Estamos unidos, somos una piña, tenemos claro lo que queremos y vamos a darle la vuelta a esto” We are united. We are a pineapple (a good thing). We are clear on what we want and we’re going to turn this thing around.

 

I like it. A host of injuries continue to plague us, and Villarreal have their own share of docked ships from their usual arsenal. Two teams desperate to gain some traction. Should be a good one!

Málaga – Sevilla

On August 27th, what was supposed to be the second match of our season ended up being the first after the first-week derby with Betis was bumped back following the players’ strike. We welcomed Málaga then and bit our nails following Cazorla’s late goal, which rendered our early 2-0 margin (courtesy of Negredo) a distant memory. At the time, this looked like a very significant victory considering Málaga’s new-oil pedigree and what appeared to be strong roster. Looking at the current table, we appear to be evenly matched and very inconsistent teams. It’s been more than 6 weeks since either side has won a match in La Liga, and thus both ships are floundering behind the competition for the Europa/Champions places that we were supposed to be competing for. A win for either side would push us past several other teams (results pending) and possibly into a tie for 6th (in our case).

Kanouté has been a last minute scratch this time because of some unknown injury. Would we have been better off to sell him this January? Babá has travelled with the team (as has Perotti), so Marcelino’s options up top will be more plentiful than in recent weeks. Spahic was thought to possibly miss this encounter with some wear and tear, but he is also on the bus. Tom del Mul also travelled south. Road trip!!!!

In other player news, Los Reyes Magos have returned wayward son Juan Cala to us from AEK Athens where he was out on loan until May. He will not play. But will Luna? Will Perotti? Will Babá????? Watch and find out!

Vamoosssss!!

Goodbye, Cáceres?

We may be bidding farewell to our Uruguayan right back today. Martín Cáceres is reportedly being sold to Juventus for €9.5M. If you remember all the way back to last spring, we acquired him from Barcelona in May for a total of 3M. He has been good-to-great all season long; most notable was his colosal effort against Barcelona in our 0-0 draw at the Camp Nou. It’s hard to know what to think about this transfer. On the one hand, we need great players if we expect great things. On the other, we have to take advantage of the sale of players that can make us money (especially when we’ve signed other players for the same position).

Motives for this sale, as far as I see them are 1) make some bank, 2) thin out the roster (we’re not playing anything but liga matches now), and 3) Coke is younger by 19 DAYS! NINETEE!N!!! This will be huge when Cáceres’s legs start to atrophy in seven years and Coke still has 19 additional days of perfectly young legs. My guess is we sell Coke in that 19 day window in 2019.

Thoughts?

Real Betis – Sevilla FC

Er Beti? El Sevilla?

There’s a hard rain’s a gonna fall this weekend over in El Porvenir. It’s the Sevilla derbi!!!!

Four months ago, we all found out that we would have to wait far too long to reignite the Sevilla derbi that’s been on a 3-year hiatus since Betis went down in 2009. We’re juiced about the chance to romp with our mostly friendly again on the same field. Del Nido told players this week to “play this match as if it were the end of the world.” He said, “When this game is over so is your life. Play like that.”

Del Nido does not want to fall victim to a newly promoted and, without boasting, inferior (on paper!) team. If that’s also true for Granada and Rayo matches, how much more is it true for our most important adversary of all.

We should expect an open match with both teams gunning for the goal. Hopefully the ref will not have to be too involved in the goings on but can safely arbiter the rising goal count instead of editing his booking sheet for 90 minutes. I, for one, hold no resentment toward Real Beits Balompié, so let’s just hope for a fun match that renews a reinvigorates desperate for renewal.

VIVA SEVILLA (FC) Y VIVA LA GIRALDA!!!

Monchi Forever! (or a while longer at least)

It has been reported that Monchi has extended until 2017.  His contract had been uncertain and there were some rumors that the Spanish football federation were trying to recruit him.

I’m really happy about this news.  He has undoubtedly made some mistakes recently.  But under Monchi this team has unquestionably seen unprecedented success.  I think that having stability in our GM, especially as things are sure to get crazy with Del Nido’s upcoming “vacation”, is an unambiguously good thing.

What does everyone think?  And what do we think of his most recent 3 million Euro signing Baba Diawara?