Fate was primed with Espanyol and filled with cruelty a descent that has become inevitable day by day. Eager to look in the mirror and sing the mea culpa, the players and the coach of the parakeet team were overwhelmed by the bitterness produced by several highly debatable referee decisions, some scandalous, to assess the consummated relegation in Mestalla after conceding a goal in the added. The defense, always the defense, has condemned the Blue and Whites. But, immediately, self-criticism appeared, the only way to explain what happened in a black season. Things have not been done well.
The second relegation in three seasons has definitively turned all the spotlights towards the box. Everyone blames Chen Yansheng, who became the first (and only) president with two relegations behind him on Sunday. Terrible.
The owner of Espanyol has been acting in a lurch for years and this is reflected in the instability of the club and, especially, of the first team. Since January 2016, when Chen bought the majority of Espanyol’s shares promising to go to the Champions League, four general managers, five sports directors and up to eight coaches have passed through the club. If adding two descents is to start trembling, this dance of names is equally terrifying.
The feeling that Spanishism conveys is that the credit of the Chinese tycoon has run out. No one disputes that he has worried so that the team does well, much less that he has put money out of his pocket to save the club from a very delicate situation. But that is now part of the past. The reality is that the accounts have been making losses for three years, that he is no longer scratching his pocket, and that he does not seem to trust anyone, giving rise to an instability that the team has not been able to bear.
“The responsibility for relegation lies with the management of the club. We have not learned from our mistakes, but we will use all our resources to return to the First Division”, the owner of Espanyol proclaimed the day after with some ambiguity, along the same lines as the first institutional reaction after the Mestalla debacle, which came from Mao Ye . “We are going to get to work immediately, thinking about the future,” the director general declared at dawn to the official media, not even to the special envoys to Valencia.
Chen’s latest nonsense, because no one has any doubts who is primarily responsible for all the important decisions made at Espanyol, came with the replacement on the bench this season. Replacing Diego MartÃnez, whose credit had run out, just after the national team break, two weeks of work were wasted that would have been invaluable for the players to get used to Luis GarcÃa’s methods and script.
By the way, the coach is one of the few who keeps his image intact at the club and will be in charge of trying to return the team to the First Division. It should be remembered, and it is not trivial, that on the five previous occasions Espanyol achieved promotion the following season.
With the sale of the club to an American investment group on hold, a negotiation that by the way ended up costing the general manager José MarÃa Durán his job, and with a more than possible replacement in the sports leadership, Espanyol is facing a very delicate summer. The budget reduction due to the relegation –television revenues will be five times less (10 vs 50 million) and the LaLiga compensation fund that allowed the team structure to be maintained three years ago will be much less this time– will imply a profound restructuring of the squad and the more than likely departure of heavyweights like Joselu or Darder.
The trickiest case of all is that of Nico Melamed (22), Luis GarcÃa’s philosopher’s stone on which he wants to build the future of the team, whose contract ends next year and continues without renewal. A few weeks ago, in addition, the youth squad player changed representatives to sign for Team Raiola, something that the club took as not a positive sign.
For now, the only certainties that Espanyol cannot escape are that next year they will have to survive in the hell of the Second Division and that Chen will continue to manage the club’s destinies. To the Chinese, like the new emperor of Hans Christian Andersen, it does not seem that his environment alerts him to his mistakes. It is thousands of kilometers away, on the banks of the Llobregat, where the people point them out. Now just listen to them.
