An extremely busy 2 months

By: Anthony | August 16th, 2008

Hola Sevillistas y ¿Cómo estás?

As this is my first blog for the Offside, I will let you know a bit about myself beforehand and as to why I wanted to get involved writing about my beloved Sevilla.

I was born in Sevilla and moved to Canada a few years ago where I was almost deprived of Spanish fútbol, more so Sevilla. The TV coverage here is not very good as the basic cable channels usually only offer the EPL and some Champions League games, to see Sevilla I had to beg my family to upgrade our package and get GolTV which also does not show many Sevilla matches seeing as we are not typically known as one of the “big two” in Spain so to speak. In general, there was a lack of knowledge when it came to fútbol in Spain, especially any team that wasn’t either Real Madrid or Barcelona, I was appauled to say the least. Since North America is new to this whole “soccer phenomenon” the people you meet are mostly glory hunters and do not know about “smaller clubs” like Sevilla. I tried and tried to educate my friends and colleagues on Sevilla but found that there just wasn’t enough information on the internet about Sevilla in English, so therefore they couldn’t understand. My goal for this blog is to educate not only my now fellow Canadians, but even hopefully some of you down south of the border about Sevilla and keep everyone updated as to whats going on in Nervión on a week-to-week basis along with the help of my co-writer Ryan as to whom which you probably already know quite well.

Anyways enough of me, and more about what you came to read about… Sevilla!

Ryan in his last blog did touch a bit on the transfer frenzy that has been going on at Sevilla in the past 2 months or so, but I’ll go in-depth a bit more and explain who you can expect to see next season in the Rojiblanco and who you can expect to see playing elsewhere.

As you probably know right now Dani Alves, Seydou Keita, and Christian Poulson, have all left Sevilla with Alves and Keita going to Barça and Poulson going to Juventus. With all these big name players being sold, and Del Nido being the smart and stubborn president he is, you know we were going to be raking in hefty sums of cash. And so it was true, Alves was sold for about €32m, Keita for about €15m, and Poulson also for €15m. Where did all this money go you may wonder? Well, Del Nido and co. have bought Lautaro Acosta from Lanús of the Argentina Prímera who is a quick and talented Midfielder whom which Jímenez hopes will spark some extra creativeness into his side. Sevilla’s second signing of the summer was defender Fernando Navarro from Mallorca. The Spanish international was seen as an ideal replacement for the injury prone Dragutinovic and the young and inexperienced likes of Crespo and David Prieto. Christian Ndri better known as “Romaric” was Del Nido’s third signing as he looked to replace Keita who had left with Alves for Barcelona. The former Le Mans midfielder was seen as an ideal man to have in the middle because of his size and decent set-piece ability. Still seeking a replacement for the departed Dani Alves, Del Nido turned his attention to one of Genoa’s stand-out defenders of their last Serie A campaign, Abdoulay Konko. The Frenchman is more of a defensive minded player than Alves was, but still had the ability to move up and score the odd goal. With Javi Navarro’s career still up in the air and Mosquera being less than an ideal centre-back to say the least Jímenez told the board he required a strong and experienced centre back to place alongside Escudé or the young and inexperienced Fazio. Lyon’s Sebastien Squillaci was seen as that guy who was perfect to fill the position, and therefore was bought, and has thus far proved to be a good signing. With the unexpected and somewhat shock departure of Christian Poulson to Juventus, Sevilla was now in desperate need of a holding/defensive midfielder, a guy to do the dirty work so to speak. With most of the arrivals coming from other leagues, Del Nido chose to look no farther than Santander where he aquired Aldo Duscher. The Argentine international was Racing’s driving force behind their UEFA Cup qualification last term, and should be able to fill the boots of Poulson perfectly fine.

If you thought that was a lot to take in, well there’s more to come!

Sevilla started their pre-season friendlies with against some pretty weak opposition to say the least. They easily handed Conil C.F. a 9-0 defeat, a few days later dusted off San Fernando 4-0, all capped off by another pummeling of C.D. Rota 3-0. Chevanton has been on fire netting 6 goals in those three games alone.

Later last month Sevilla travelled to Russia where they participated in the Russian Railways Tournament hosted by Lokomotiv Moscow in which they defeated AC Milan 1-0 in the first match thanks to an own goal by Gattuso.

With the shock defeat of Chelsea in penalties thanks to Lokomotiv that now meant that the final would be Sevilla v Lokomotiv in which we brought them back down to earth with a convincing 3-0 win, thanks to goals scored by Romaric, Koné, and the man of the pre-season, Chevanton.

Sevilla therefore lifted the Railways Cup led by Maresca, Chevanton, and an ecstatic Diego Capel.

As this was my first entry, it was yes, a bit long, but like I said, its been an extremely busy two months at Sevilla!!

Please feel free to give me any suggestions of what I could do more or less of in following entries, and also any constructive critisizm is welcome and appreciated. If there is anything you want to know about Sevilla or myself, please feel free to ask!

Before I go, I would like to just take a quick moment to thank Ryan for allowing me to write alongside him here at the Offside, and you can be sure to hear alot from us in the upcoming season about everything Sevilla.

Be back soon, hasta luego!