Posts Tagged ‘Proper Football’

Sid Lowe: Divine intervention may save Espanyol

A religious pilgrimage has been followed by an upturn in Espanyol’s form meaning their new stadium may not have to host second division football

Five colossal cranes still tower over it, glinting as the sun sets behind the hills, but work is virtually finished, contracts exchanged and keys handed over. After a decade as a tenant rattling round someone else’s neglected gaff, RCD Espanyol finally have a home of their own. It’s time to bid goodbye and good riddance to a cold, grey athletics arena where you need binoculars to see the subs’ bench let alone their team-mates on the pitch. A cold, grey athletics arena that, despite its beautiful, almost mystical location on top of Montjuic, never felt quite right, that has a pitch that’s cut to bits and a dressing room where the paint peels off the walls.

Time to say a big hello to Cornellà-El Prat: a proper football stadium, steep stands up against the pitch, decked in blue and white. At Montjuic Espanyol have an average attendance of just over 20,000 (in a stadium with over 55,000 seats), huge tarpaulins covering their blushes and thousands of seats at each end. At Cornellà, things will be different. A €53.4m arena, Espanyol’s new home occupies 81,163 square metres, has 40,500 seats breathing down the players’ necks, solar panels on the roof, and even a cemetery for pericos who have passed away. Dead parrots, in other words.

With an “Elite” rating from Uefa, it is the kind of ground they proudly insist will be worth 10-15 extra points a season, once it’s been inaugurated against Liverpool on 2 August. No wonder it’s been building to that moment pretty much ever since they departed the Sarrià in 1997. No wonder it’s been at the centre of everyone’s thoughts, even to the detriment of the team, the director general describing this season as “a journey across the desert”, the end in sight; the director of marketing insisting: “I was essentially brought to oversee the move.” A new home that brings new hope.

There is just one big problem. Cornellà will be the newest and best stadium in the division but that division might well be the Second. They wait 11 years for a fresh start, the opportunity to take a step up, build on a fifth place, two Copa del Reys and a Uefa Cup final, becoming a real force with a clearer identity than ever before. And instead, they face a first relegation in 15 years. As the Barça fans’ joke goes, Espanyol’s new ground will be called the SEAT stadium because, never mind Madrid, Barcelona or Sevilla, it’s more likely to host Córdoba, Ibiza or Toledo.

The collapse has been dramatic. Halfway through last season, Espanyol were third, Uefa Cup runners-up, unbeaten in 14 games and with three players in the Spain squad. Then suddenly, the wheels came off and the divisions between players, coach and club surfaced; the uneasy truce was broken. Raúl Tamudo, Dani Jarque and Iván de la Peña suffered injuries and Carlos Kameni went to the African Nations Cup. Espanyol lost three on the trot. The worst implosion in La Liga history was about to happen. In March they were still hanging on to a European place; by the end of the season, they were 12th, closer to the drop. They didn’t win one of their last ten matches and scored only three goals – two of them penalties, the other a deflected fluke.

Albert Riera left for Liverpool, Pablo Zabaleta for Manchester City and the coach, Ernesto Valverde, went to Greece, his frustration with the club eating at him. Although they won their first two games – Steve Finnan joined them as league leaders – poor results followed. Under coach Tintín Márquez they collected 12 points in 13 games, under his replacement Mané just three in six. Former player Mauricio Pochettino became the club’s third coach, taking president Dani Sánchez Llibre’s total to five director generals, six technical secretaries and 13 coaches in 11 years.

Pochettino got three draws but his side were then beaten by Sevilla. Espanyol still couldn’t score. Luis García hasn’t scored in six months. Raúl Tamudo started the season nine goals off the all-time La Liga record for a Catalan and is still six away. The absence of the injured playmaker De la Peña was particularly felt. With him starting, they lost once in seven, winning three; without him they were winless in 17. De la Peña returned and unbelievably Espanyol beat Barcelona. Two goals made him the side’s top scorer with four goals. “We’ve been liberated,” Pochettino declared.

They hadn’t. Three defeats and a dramatic draw with Mallorca followed. With ten weeks left, Espanyol were bottom on just 22 points, eight from safety. Even four wins in ten games – as many as they’d managed in 28 – might not be enough, leaving them two short of the 40-point mark. It was, cruel culés cackled, going to take a miracle for Espanyol to survive.

But if that was what it was going to take, that was what Pochettino was bloody well going to get. He packed his bag, rounded up his wife and his No2 and hiked 12km to Montserrat, a religious mountain and shrine with restaurants, gift shops and the Morenata – the black virgin, supposedly found in the ninth century. A shrine rescued from anarchist looting during the civil war, where Catalan intellectuals barricaded themselves away from Franco’s police and Jordi Pujol’s political party Convergència was founded. Where FC Barcelona celebrate their successes and where a puffing Pochettino, continuing a long tradition of footballing superstition, pleaded with the virgin to save the region’s other, often forgotten club.

And so she did. Last night, Iván Alonso’s header gave Espanyol a 1–0 win over Racing and carried them off the bottom for the first time in over a month. Since his pilgrimage, Pochettino’s side are unbeaten, have clinched seven points and back-to-back home victories. They have climbed to four points from safety and Sporting de Gijón, who have won just two in ten, face Espanyol on Thursday. Survival remains difficult but their run-in isn’t as bad as it could be – Betis, Valencia, Athletic and Málaga at home, Sporting, Atlético and Almería away. Like the Bride of Frankenstein, Espanyol are, incredibly, alive. “The Miracle,” cheered AS, “is possible.”

When Pochettino hiked to Montserrat, Sánchez Llibre’s eyes darted about shiftily. “I can’t join him because I’ve got two hernias,” he claimed, fumbling for an excuse. “If someone gives me a lift I’ll do half of it. Or maybe I’ll walk from Montjuic to Cornellà instead.” Yeah, maybe. And thanks to a puffing Argentinian and an obliging virgin maybe, just maybe, he’ll do it as a First Division president after all.

Results and week 31 talking points:

Another week on and nothing changes at the top. Real Madrid and Barcelona both won 1–0. Does anyone really need telling how they did it? Nice to see that anti-Madrid refereeing conspiracy in full flow.

Atlético Madrid’s club shop was broken into on Thursday night. Someone threw a manhole cover through the window and stole hundreds of shirts. It’s a good job they didn’t break into the trophy room. They might have made off with a carpet.

Tough choice for goal of the week, with Emana, Arango and Apoño scoring absolute belters for Betis, Mallorca and Málaga respectively.

La Sexta have come up with the bright idea of putting the yellow cards on the screen in graphics underneath the team’s names, as if they were goalscorers. Which is fine normally but on a night like last night when Sevilla face Valencia, you end up not being able to see a thing. There were 15 yellows (or at least there were when this column lost count) in a game that was a cheat-fest, packed with scything challenges, dreadful dives, utter lunacy, appalling refereeing, and some shameful play-acting. It was fantastically entertaining in a comically dirty sort of way, but also pretty awful. Cor, who’d have thought it with Carlos Marchena, David Albelda, Diego Capel and Fernando Navarro playing?!

All should become much clearer over the next few days, with midweek fixtures as well as weekend ones. And thanks to those geniuses at the league, the big – really big – run of games is about to crank up for the second time this season, starting with Barcelona v Sevilla on Wednesday night.

Results:

Getafe 0–1 Barcelona, Atlético 3–0 Numancia, Athletic 0–1 Deportivo, Málaga 1–1 Mallorca, Recreativo 0–1 Real Madrid, Valladolid 0–0 Villarreal, Almería 2–1 Osasuna [Now that's a header], Espanyol 1–0 Racing, Valencia 3–1 Sevilla, Betis 2–0 Sporting

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Wenger urges FA action over Wembley pitch

• Arsenal manager claims surface was ‘not flat’
• Chelsea boss Guus Hiddink sees nothing wrong with pitch

Arsène Wenger has demanded that someone at the Football Association be held to account for the state of the pitch at Wembley, which he variously described as “embarrassing”, “laughable” and “a disaster”.

The Arsenal manager watched his team suffer a 2-1 defeat against Chelsea in ­Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final on the once hallowed turf and, though he said that the uneven playing ­surface was not the reason for the defeat, he condemned it in the strongest terms.

“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we have lost because of the pitch, but it’s really embarrassing,” the Frenchman said. “When you see what this stadium has cost and you cannot turn up with a proper football pitch … somebody must give explanations about that.”

The FA has overseen the turf being relayed five times since the stadium opened in 2007 and the most recent attempt in January, a rye compound featuring a synthetic element which is meant to help “bedding in”, will remain in place for the FA Cup final on 30 May. A sixth re‑lay will take place after the summer season of concerts.

Wenger, though, said the problem was not that the turf cut up but rather that the pitch itself was “not flat”. “When you build a stadium with that kind of money and you still have not a pitch, it’s laughable,” he added. “The quality of the pitch is a disaster. I just think it’s not a pitch.”

The FA hoped the original turf would last and earn plaudits but it has claimed that the concerts that are part of the Wembley business plan made that impossible. However, Wenger said: “I’m not sure that the pop concerts are the reason because this pitch was never good.”

Fabio Capello, the England manager, has skirted around the issue but Wenger was not the only voice of dissent over the weekend. “It’s not an excuse, you can’t blame the pitch but it didn’t really help,” the ­Arsenal striker Robin van Persie said.

“If you compare this pitch to the one at the Emirates, there’s a big difference because when you get the ball [at Wembley], it’s just bouncing and bouncing and ­bouncing. You really need to focus on where it first comes from and, at the Emirates, it’s just smooth.

“We had the same problem in Holland with the Ajax Stadium when it was new, a few years ago,” continued the Dutchman. “It was so bad, they changed the pitch every two weeks.”

The Chelsea manager, Guus Hiddink, though, played down the concerns. “The pitch was good to play. I don’t want to make a lot of comments about this,” he said. “If you go to a lot of places in Europe and Africa you get pitches that are a lot worse than that. I don’t think you should start talking about the pitch, whether you win or lose.”

Sir Alex Ferguson, however, insisted he withdrew Paul Scholes, Berbatov and Patrice Evra from the starting line-up because of the state of the Wembley pitch. “Yesterday [in the first semi-final] it looked spongy and dead and difficult to move the ball quickly around it,” the United manager said. “They’ve got all these lights around the perimeter to help the growth and the standard of the soil. But it looks dead to me.

“Once we made our mind up [to play the younger players] I was quite enthusiastic about it. It was the right thing to do. It was good for them.”