Levante-Sevilla Playing Football

We won during the week! I’m not sure that anyone noticed, but we beat Espanyol 3-1 in the Copa del Rey. Which is a good thing. Advancing in that tournament would be great in a season without European competition.

Now, to get BACK into European competition, we should probably make sure we beat teams like Levante. Let’s go Sevilla!

I predict we win 2-1.

PS. Does anyone else miss Arouna Kone?

Next to go?

In a recent press conference Del Nido has reiterated (as he has before) that Sevilla is a selling club.  And alluded to the likelihood that we will continue to be a selling club regardless of whether we qualify for European competition or not.

My question then is this: Who do we think will be the next player Sevilla sells?  I don’t mean, who will be the next to leave because they haven’t performed to standard.  I mean a guy who has played well and will be sold for the sake of preserving this team’s fiscal viability.

Possible candidates:

1. Navas
2. Perotti
3. Rakitic
4. Cicinho
5. Negredo
6. Navarro
7. Medel

Others? And a bonus question, how much do you think they will go for?

Scary to think about, but its the reality of being a Sevilla supporter.  Put your answers in the comments.  Cheers.

Jubilation!!! (Suck it Ronaldo)

Awesomeness!

Also, Zonal Marking featured our game.  And, as always, they do an awesome job, here.

Here is the overview, but you should DEFINITELY read their post.

Real were undeniably sloppy at the basics tonight, and not all of that can be attributed to Sevilla’s approach. Their simple short passes under no pressure were wayward, while their marking at set-pieces was bizarrely slack for a Mourinho side. It was also interesting how obviously affected they were by Sevilla’s physicality, with both Higuain and Di Maria (probably Real’s worst two players) lashing out.

That shouldn’t take anything away from Sevilla’s display, though: their initial strategy – (a) pressing heavily, (b) marking Alonso and (c) using an extra holding midfielder – meant they stifled Real’s passing throughout the first half, and although Mourinho could call upon three fantastic attacking options from the bench, Michel was able to respond.

Michel set up intelligently and reacted alertly, and deserves a great amount of credit tonight.

Great great game from our boys.  Letting in just two goals in four games is pretty impressive.  Only scoring four leave some room for improvement.

Signings and Trophies

• First trophy of the year!!!!!  Trofeo Puerta.  With a 2-0 win over Deportivo.
• Sounds like this new Brazilian defender Cicinho has been impressive.
• Signed a CB, Botia, who was on the Spanish Olympic team…  As an added bonus, he played for Barcelona and their rights to him expired a month ago.  So we’re sort of sticking it to them.  Yay!

I think this team is slowly coming together.  A lot of new faces and not a lot of time for them to gel (first game in 9 days?!?!?!).  But, what the hell?  Why not be optimistic, right?

 

Odds and Ends

God, the off season is boring.

Some random bits:

• Our team is the unproud owner of a number of hooligans.  If anyone can explain to me exactly what went down with the preseason violence and Del Nido’s response, I’d greatly appreciate it.
• We signed a 19-year-old french guy named Geoffrey Kondogbia for five seasons.  He is a 6’2″ DM who had been playing for Lens and has been playing for all of the French youth teams.  He is another advanced prospect (like Rabello) and seems like a very promising pickup.
• Piris was jerking us around and then Roma swooped in so Monchi said, “stop wasting our time” and walked away.
• Escude and Guarente are gone.  Sqd: Thank you for all of your immense contributions to this club and its great history!!!  Guarente: Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

Otherwise, I’m just bored.  This season really needs to start.

Tidbits – Euro and other news

Pretty good match between two of Europe’s biggest.  Navas came on in the 65th minute and on the whole was very active and involved.  Aside from one or two crosses which could have been more precise, I thought he had a nice came, causing more trouble down the right side than David Silva had managed before getting replaced.

Also, Fabregas started and played pretty well, finishing Spain’s only goal.  But later in the match, Negredo was snubbed and instead Torres came on for some offensive spark.  Torres was HORRIFIC.  He blew about three good chances (one of them a one on one with Buffon fed in by our very own Jesus Navas).  He also managed to pick up a yellow in his limited minutes.  I’m hoping that this means that Negredo will now be ahead of him in the queue.  Depending on tactics I think there is a good chance that we see Negredo starting on Thursday against Ireland.

Right now, I’m half watching Rakitic and Croatia play Ireland.

And finally, in a small piece of financial news, apparently, because he played a whopping total of 9 minutes for Arsenal this season and Arsenal qualified for the Champions League.  Squillaci earned us a gift of 250,000 Euros.  So that’s nice.

Anyway, go Sevillistas!

Oh, and in bad news, I guess Medel got in trouble with the Chilean team and has gotten kicked off the team (am I understanding that correctly?  Could someone with better Spanish clarify that?) after he was caught out late clubbing…  That sucks.  He’s never been a trouble-maker with us…

Maduro

El Desmarque reports that we signed Hedwiges Maduro for three years. I think he was injured last year as he only played a handful of games for Valencia. He’s 6’1″ central defender. I guess he was called in to the Dutch preliminary Euro 2012 team but didn’t make the final cut. transfermarkt values him at 2.5-3 million euros. But no report of what we’re paying.

Anyone know much more?

This seems like a solid signing… But hard to say I guess. Still no news on Spahic? What does this mean for Fazio?

The Last Bastion of Optimism

OK guys.  This season has been….  rough.  Jeremy served up the sobering reminder of who we are as Sevilla fans and what expectations are reasonable.  And then, with some help from the officiating, Real Madrid helped to reinforce that reminder.

And yet, this week actually went better than we could have possibly expected.  We never realistically could have expected more than a loss away at RM.  And yet every team above us with whom we are competing for a Europa spot, dropped points.  Forget about Levante, Malaga, and Valencia.  What we need is to finish in the top 7 (or ideally 6).

To finish seventh, we have to pass two of the following 3 teams: Bilbao, Atletico, or Osasuna.  That is still very possible.

Look at the remaining games for each team (home games in caps):

• Atletico (49 pts): SOCIEDAD, MALAGA, Villareal
• Bilbao (48 pts): REAL MADRID, GETAFE, Levante
• Osasuna (48 pts): Valencia, SOCIEDAD, Santander
• Sevilla (46 pts): BETIS, RAYO, Espanyol

Of all these teams, we probably have the easiest schedule.  Additionally, Bilbao and Atletico are playing each other in the Europa final AND Bilbao is in the Copa del Rey final.

I’m also curious on what happens if Atletico wins Europa, but Bilbao wins CdR.  Does anyone know exactly how all these scenarios could play out?  Is it possible to finish 8th and get a Europa spot?

Anyway, the bottom line is that the critical week is actually next weekend while Osasuna goes up against Valencia who are fighting hard for 3rd, and Bilbao host Real Madrid who have nothing else left to focus on (hahaha).  If they both lose and we win, then we’d at least be in 7th.

This season isn’t over yet.  We still have a LOT to play for and I truly believe that we could still pull this off.

Put your guesses for the top 9 spots in the comments.

Keep the faith.  Vamos mi Sevilla!

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?

Tidbits: Varas, Negredo, Rumors

Been a while.  As a non-European, I REALLY have a tough time caring at all about international break.

But thought I’d throw this up as a place holder:

1) Negredo extended!  (did we ever even discuss that?)

2) Varas extended!

3) Negredo slow to recover from injury (subtext: why don’t we have a GD backup!?!?!)

4) Stupid rumors about other people we may be interested in: Morata… Gio, obviously…

5) Perotti is interested in becoming Spanish since Argentina is inexplicably snubbing him.

6) FINALLY a game this weekend!!!  We need to win this one.  Its one of those “here is how you blow it” type of games.  And can’t take it for granted.

7) Our defense has let in the least goals of anyone in La Liga.

Discuss.  Back to studying for me.