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.

Tottenham: Dream Crushers

Remembering Barcelona blogs that have routinely accused clubs of standing in the way of players’ “dreams” of coming to their team.

New reports are that Gio is stuck in a Big Ben-sized pickle: he wants to leave London, and Tottenham doesn’t want him to stay; Sevilla wants him, but Tottenham rejects bids for him. Good idea, u gize!!

Gio was courted by a few sides this summer, but said several times that it would please him to play for Sevilla. I would expect the Barca fan base, so concerned with players’ dreams in the past (Cesc, Sánchez, Afellay) to be posting about this development very soon. Where is the Dream Police? Here’s a copy/paste of a recent assessment of the Arsenal/Barcelona/Cesc menage a trois mud fight, with the teams and names changed:

“Gio wants to leave. What is the point of keeping him? But Tottenham don’t want to ‘lose’ in this deal. So it’s X number or get lost, which is their right. But that right makes them no less stupid.”

Tottenham! You, dream crushers and overall poor business practitioners!! It is shameless for you to hold onto him any longer now that he’s made it clear he wants to leave. Why pay a player when you don’t intend to use him? It’s silly. Let him live his dream!

Dempsey?

OK.  This rumor is obviously not going to happen.  I’d put the odds at roughly 0.0000045%.

But this is an English language Sevilla blog where many of us are from the US, and to me, this is the best rumor I could imagine.  Not necessarily on a footballing level (though I think that Dempsey is a very good player) but just on a personal level.  I (admittedly) used to follow the New England Revolution and Dempsey is my favorite USMNT player.  So this would be my favorite player coming to play for my favorite team.

Could Dempsey help this team?  Yes.  He’s not a pure 9.  But he’s a good withdrawn forward who can create for himself and for others. And he can play up top, out wide, or in the middle.  He causes defenses headaches with his speed and dribbling.  He isn’t the physical presence of Negredo or Kanoute by any means, but he’s crafty and he gets on the end of all kinds of balls he has no business getting to.   Honestly though, its tough to assess him.  I think his passing, game awareness, and overall skill level could make him a great mach for La Liga and Sevilla, though I’ve mostly seen him play against CONCACAF opposition so its a bit hard to judge.  He has been consistently one of Fulham’s best players the last few years and was their leading scorer in ’10-’11.

This post really has no point.  He’s not coming here.  But seeing these rumors suddenly emerge made my heart skip a beat.  He’s valued at something like 9 million Euros…  We’ll see.  I’d be thrilled, but not necessarily for the right reasons.

Any less biased heads have an assessment?

PS. Those black/red Fulham jerseys are sweet.

PPS. Gio rumors are back a bit.  They won’t die.  But honestly, at this point, having crashed out of Europa, I’m not convinced we’re getting anyone else.

Well Done, Sid; Random Notes

Piqué says Mourinho is ruining Spanish soccer. As if there has never been tension in the clásico before. Or pig’s heads thrown or anything. What’s really ruining it is Madrid and Barcelona. Not so much because of episodes like last night but because of their stranglehold on the game – their economic and political power and their continued failure to contemplate the consequences of their actions.

(Via)

• Barcelona’s quotes after Clásicos have always struck me as a bit strange; either they’re all involved in an elaborate, ironic joke just to troll the entire world, or they genuinely don’t realize that they are also always involved in the fights, sniping, and general ugliness. And while in general I wish Sid Lowe would spend more time talking about the other 18 teams in La Liga (admittedly, he does more of this than probably anyone), I loved this quote from his Supercopa wrap-up. “Ruining”. Exactly.
• I thought the biggest story in the press conference in which Del Nido said Gio is definitely not coming wasn’t that we’re not looking to sign the Tottenham forward, but rather that we’ve been in contact for two weeks now with some other club for some other player that no one in the press has mentioned. I’m obviously not sure who that team or player is, and I doubt this story is based on any super concrete facts, but the possibility of Afellay coming on a loan is a very interesting one indeed–he’s a fantastic attacking player, we obviously tried very hard to sign him last year, and he’s nearly guaranteed to spend endless hours on the bench watching Pedro and Alexis fight it out for the spot he was most likely to occupy for Barcelona. Will this be the year Afellay becomes Barcelona’s Canales? It’s an interesting idea for Sevilla; we’ll see.
• Finally, just wanted to point out what you’ve probably already realized: with the planned early September international break, the LFP strike for the first two weeks of the season actually pushes back the first game of the season a third week, to September 11. When we take on Villarreal…hopefully by then we’ll have our roster finalized and ready to go!

Hardware!

The season is a success regardless of what happens from here on out!  No one can ever take away from us our proudly won Trofeo Teresa Herrera!!!!!!  YES YES YES!!!!!!  2011 winners of the Trofeo Teresa Herrera!!!!!  Grandparents kissing their grandchildren!  Pandemonium in the streets of Seville!

Honestly, (in case you couldn’t pick up on my subtle sarcasm) I find it more than a little ridiculous that pre-season games get their own trophies.  But, whatever.

I really wanted to get to post a nice smiling picture of Giovani Dos Santos holding up a Sevilla jersey, but looks like we need to continue our wait.  I’m starting to lose faith, though he hasn’t held up an Udinese jersey yet either, so there is obviously still reason for optimism.

Anyway, pre-season = over.  Did anyone see the game today?  Any observations? Sounds like it was a tale of two halves with the canteranos (please tell me I spelled that correctly) struggling in the first half, and then things getting better in the second.  Is Coke our pre-season leading scorer?  Does he get forward in general or is this a new habit of his?

Any guesses from today on what our starting lineup will be for Thursday?  In the words of Marvin Gaye: “Let’s get it on.”

The “Other League”

Quick rant:  I hate this expression the “other league”.  And I hate that our players and coach have made winning the “other league” one of our central aspirations.  Yes, I know, there is a zero percent probability of anyone other than Barca or Real winning La Liga.  And I realize it is a key component of the narrative being pedaled (and which I buy) by Presidente Del Nido that there isn’t true competition.

But its upsetting to me that even the players and coaches acknowledge and admit defeat before a game has been played.  Again, I realize fully that it would be delusional to argue anything else, but in pre-season, to set your goal as winning the “other league” is just a bit too defeatist to me, even while it is certainly more realistic.

OK.  Whatever.  Rant over

PS. Go sign Gio and get this nonsense over with.  He is demanding to come here despite our offer being about 3 million euros less than Udinese (who say they are confident they will get him).  I like that Gio wants so bad to come…  Get on with it.

PPS. Anytime we put Jesus Navas as a topic of discussion in our posts, we get about 50 more visits.  Jesus Navas Jesus Navas Jesus Navas Jesus Navas…  Just saying….

Tidbits: Romaric, Alfaro, Medel, Gio?, and the Blog

1) Romaric and Alfaro are still on the team.  Which doesn’t seem like a good thing for anyone.  Romaric had  weird situation where Bursaspor and Sevilla had an agreement (for a measly 1.9million) the player and the team had an agreement, and yet for some reason they pulled out.  So I don’t know what we do with Romaric.  Alfaro is interested in Mallorca, but its still taking some time.  And the summer moves along.

2) Medel will finally start playing in our next friendly!  Yay!  Someone getting healthy!  On that note, has anyone heard anything about Guarente?  What is his status?

3) Giovanni…  I was sure they were just waiting until August struck so Tottenham wouldn’t have to give 10% to Barcelona.  Guess I was wrong.  What’s the hold up?  Are they getting other offers and entertaining them?  Everything about him has been totally silent.  And if he’s going to join us, he should so so soon.  The season is getting closer and closer.

4) The Blog: I just want to say how great it is to see so many people coming to the blog.  The blog has really made it a lot more fun for me to be a fan and its really fun seeing it grow. Since most of you can’t see the blog stats that wordpress puts up, I’ll maybe try and show more later, but I’ll give a quick stat.  In June of 2010, when the season was over and two months after we started this blog, we had 457 views in the whole month.  This year we had triple that in June with 1,459.  Those are readers who have come to the blog while games aren’t even being played!  And this month, August, just six days into the month and we already have almost as much as that June with 436.  Overall we’ve had 21,500 views and 4,000 comments. Some day we can have a full conversation and post about blog growth/future.  Anyway, that will have to be later.   So its just to say that I think its exciting seeing this community grow and having so many people come by, visit, comment, and contribute.  Yay!  Monchi’s Men!

Tidbits: Reason for pessimism?

I read this really interesting blog post that I wanted to pass along.  http://elsevilla.lavanguardia.es/notes/23994-campana-2011-2012-i-de-que-estamos-haciendo-mal

Given my very poor Spanish I can’t follow all of it.  But it makes some main points: 1) Dissatisfaction with the management of players (overpaying for not great ones, not finding places for guys we’re loaning to go, underselling good ones…) 2) Lack of progress in being a viable economic entity.  3) Constant medical problems plaguing our team and some of our best players. 4) A poor job of attracting new fans and developing the fan base.

Disclaimer.  That was me trying to summarize an article in a language I don’t speak that I read over a week ago.  So go check it out yourselves and correct everything I’m wildly off the mark on.  But it was a good article as I remember it…

Other notes (some of which are very related to the article):

1) Rakitic seems to still be having trouble getting healthy.   Gonna be another 1-2 months.  Crap.

2) Romaric seems to have found a Turkish team, though the numbers for his sale have ranged from 1.5 million euro to 4.5…  The low end of that is BAD.  The high end is more acceptable.  We’ll see.

3) Acosta will be loaned to Racing for the year for 600,000 euros.  I think that’s great news.  No clause for them to buy him, so hopefully he plays a lot, blossoms and then we can go from there.  Did you guys know we paid 7million euros for him?!  I didn’t.  Or had forgotten.  Insanity.

4) No news on Gio.  My money is that he is officially signs within a week for a reasonable fee.  Knock on wood.

That’s it for now.  Read the article I linked to!  What are your thoughts?

More Tidbits

1) Sevilla won their first pre-season game 9-0 against Unión Deportiva Roteña (they in tercera?).  So, don’t get too excited.  Rodri and Negredo each had two.

2) Kone played well then…  got injured.  My spanish isn’t good enough to be clear on what it was, but it was feared serious, though the team site is saying he’s feeling much better today.  That guy has NO luck.  I hope he’s OK.

3) They named 5 captains (do I understand that right?  really? FIVE?!?! is that normal?): Palop, Escude, Kanoute, Navas, and NEGREDO!

4) Which leads me to Negredo…  Seems like today is the due date for the buyback clause.  Either we have our star striker and newly named captain…  Or 21 million euros.  Id prefer the former.  Especially with the season so close.

5) Del Nido only wants a loan with option to buy deal for Gio, Tottenham want a straight sale.  Unclear if its posturing or hard lines from both sides.  He also said that Sevilla havent even inquired about Jeffren…  So who knows?  Maybe its all just negotiation strategy…  Or maybe we’re really staying put.

6) Alfaro is still with us.  That surprised me.  He scored…  I don’t know what the plan is with him.  A little surprised this isn’t long resolved.  Romaric played as well.

Anyway, just keeping things moving on here.  I’ll be back in school soon and will likely disappear for extended periods of time… But hope everyone’s enjoying the slow summer.

Tidbits

Gio: Still some rumors suggesting that he might be headed towards us.  But I assume we need to wait for the Copa to be finished.  Mexico won’t progress to the next round, so his participation should be nearing a finish. It will be interesting to see if other offers come in for him, given his good performance in the Gold Cup.  I’m not sure if he’s done as well in South America.  Also, the Luka Modric standoff in Tottenham might be indirectly affecting us as well.  Part of why he was expendable for Tottenham (aside from never having played particularly well for them) was that Modric was playing so well.  If Modric gets his wish and leaves, then Dos Santos is suddenly one step closer to actually playing…  We’ll see.  I’d like him to come (as I’ve stated elsewhere).

Jeffren: Some emerging rumors that Sevilla are interested in Barca player Jeffren.  I imagine this is Plan B hunting if Gio falls through.  Have many of you seen him play?  How does he look?  Any preference between him and Gio?

Negredo: Just wanted to point something out.  In two separate articles, by two separate players (del Moral and Coke), Negredo was sited as the player most accommodating and welcoming to them as they transitioned to a new team.  This is for natural reasons as he played with del Moral for the Selection and with Coke at Rayo Vallecano, but its just nice to hear that he is such a good teammate and leader.  I want this guy on our team for a long time to come.  This is the last year of a potential Real Madrid buyback right?

Romaric: I mentioned this in a comment, but he’s still around.  And we don’t really have any other healthy attacking center mids right now.  He definitely had some excellent stretches for us last year.  But his attitude went to $hit for some stretches as well.  What do you all think?  Given that there are no buyers right now, should he be given a real chance to be a part of this team again?  Or should we find a way to sell him no matter what price?

Otherwise, sounds like things are getting going in preseason.  Del Moral says that Marcelino is putting a lot of emphasis on hard work and defense to make the team as balanced as possible.  I’m in support of that.  Of course, its kind of a throw-away statement, especially this early in training.  But yeah, this team has room to tighten up in the back…

Ugh.  Season needs to start!