My Return, Zokora Signs, Gámez TO SIGN and the Luis Fabiano Saga

By: Anthony | July 10th, 2009

Well all I can say is it’s good to be back. I’ve been traveling a fair bit throughout Canada and Europe and have had access to the internet but it’s been hard finding time to keep up with the blog. Luckily there hasn’t been a WHOLE LOT of activity to report about – mostly rumours with no substance and our first signing which took place yesterday.

After about a month of negotiations with Tottenham Hotspur, Del Nido and Monchi have finally signed their guy. He was said to be an integral part of Monchi’s plan to assemble a competitive side for next season as well as the Champions League.

We are believed to have payed about €9 million for the Ivorian and he has agreed to a four year deal to stay in Nervión. Like all players Monchi signs, Zokora has a €30 million release clause attached to his contract so if he’s the next big thing in Spain like Alves was or Fabiano is, he isn’t leaving on the cheap.

Being a Tottenham supporter, I’ve had the chance to watch Zokora in action many times and I wouldn’t say I highly rate him but I definitely do consider him a quality signing. He’s got loads of pace and some decent skill which should make him quite effective in La Liga. His biggest downfall is by far his finishing but then I guess it’s a good thing he’s a defensive midfielder so we won’t have to rely much upon him to score. He also tends to lack quality distribution of the ball and if he could work on that I think he could definitely be a huge success. With that said you are probably wondering what does he possess then? Well, he’s got more energy than probably Jesús Navas and Diego Capel combined if you can imagine that being possible and is a tank in the midfield when it comes to breaking up play.

Zokora was our main target of the transfer window and now that we’ve got him we’re moving on to our second target – a defender who we’ve been linked to for some time and that is Jesús Gámez.

Apparently as of today we’ve reached an agreement for the signature of the defender from Málaga in a deal which includes a player swap of our own defender Lolo who would be heading to our Andalucían neighbours. Lolo spent last season on loan in Málaga, did considerably well and feels he has a better chance at first team football so he’s happy about the move as well.

We would have not been able to guarantee Lolo first team football in Sevilla so it’s a move that benefits all parties as we desperately need a right back seeing as there’s been a void since Dani Alves left. Gámez is just that and was one of the main reasons if not the main one why Málaga did so well this year and were extremely hard to score against – something we know all too well.

It will mark our second signing in the span of less than a week but just as we seemed to have been adding some key pieces to the puzzle, we might be losing our biggest.

Saying that Luis Fabiano had a successful Confederations Cup in South Africa last month would be an understatement as our very own Brazilian striker came away with the Golden Boot and a first place medal to prove it. This however has attracted some of Europe’s top clubs to our prized possession with AC Milan being the most persistent to acquire his services.

The Fabiano transfer saga has been on and off ever since the tournament had begun and his agent adds more fuel to the fire each and every day. He will come out to the media and say things like “Milan are close to a deal” or “Fabiano’s asking price should be brought down because his dream is to play in Milan”; obviously I’m paraphrasing but that is the general idea.

Today his agent has come out with his latest garbage saying that Sevilla have lowered their asking price for Fabiano from €30 million to €18 million. Luis has a €30 million release clause in his contract and knowing Del Nido and Monchi, they will wait for the full price before letting our star man go.

There has been argument that he is 29 and possibly reaching the end of his career (as many Brazilians do at a young age) but the fact of the matter is that he has only really flourished over the past few years leading me to expect that he will still be good for the next few years.

Fabiano’s agent has also come out and said that “Sevilla should lower their asking price because we are in a global economic crisis”. Is this man being serious? I actually couldn’t help but laugh when I heard it. How can he expect us to compete with the best in Spain when we only have a quarter of their budget to begin with and then we can’t even sell our top players for their true value – it just doesn’t work. We’re being over-charged for players like Zokora so although €30 million may be a bit steep, we absolutely must hold out for the full asking price.

Assuringly for us, Fabiano has come out and said that while Milan would be a move he would be more than happy to stay in Sevilla as he loves the team, the people, and most importantly the city where his family is comfortable settled in.

To be honest, as much as we could generate from the sale of Fabiano, we cannot sell him. We are a big club now and big clubs don’t get pushed around into selling their biggest stars. Obviously we’ve done it in the past with Sergio Ramos, Julio Baptista and Dani Alves just to name a few but if we want to maintain our position in the league and as top side in world football then we must know when to say no, regardless of what club come knocking. Milan’s actual top target was Edin Dzeko of Bundesliga champions Wolfsburg. They flat out told Milan “no” and as a result there is no risk of them losing their star striker. We have to have the same mentality if we truly want to progress or we will forever stagnate both in La Liga and in European competition. The Fabiano/Kanouté strike partnership is mouth watering and if they hadn’t both been injured so much of last season we would have seen a much different Sevilla side.

We’re adding these key players like Gámez and Zokora to the squad to assemble a squad which can compete with the best, we can’t be letting our best players go. If we do indeed end up keeping Fabiano and all of our key assets, I believe we will have a solid squad going into next year.