Ahumada Transfer Falls Through At The Last Minute

The final hours in the Euro­pean trans­fer mar­ket usu­ally make for big splashes and as well as some that leave peo­ple scratch­ing their heads.  This time around the mar­ket left every­one with a sense of dis­sat­is­fac­tion as very lit­tle went on.  The 2009 win­ter mar­ket will be remem­bered as one that One thing is for sure when they say “done deal” in foot­ball, they actu­ally mean “we’re work­ing on it”.   If there is one thing that annoys us in this neck of the woods is the way con­tracts, trans­fers, and loans are nego­ti­ated.    Also there is the occa­sional instance when the club feels remorse and decides to com­pletely leave the nego­ti­at­ing table at the last pos­si­ble moment.

Espanyol was just moments away from obtain­ing River Plate mid­fielder Oscar Ahu­mada, but the Argen­tines walked out at the last minute.  Embat­tled River pres­i­dent José María Aguilar inex­plic­a­bly retreated from the nego­ti­at­ing table due to the even­tual sale of another player, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to sell a player of the impor­tance of Ahu­mada to the Mil­lonar­ios.

Like any­one who was left at the altar, there were some big repre­cus­sions at the Cata­lan club.  All of a sud­den Uruguayan Iván Alonso was the only rein­force­ment.   The even­tual loan of Ángel to Gim­nàs­tic was scrapped and that left Espanyol even more needy since Jonathan left for Albacete.

It is just a micro­cosm of things going wrong for a team in every pos­si­ble way.  The poten­tial arrivals of Hernán Cre­spo and Lucas Bar­rios remained as such due to dif­fer­ences in money.  Other pos­si­ble acqui­si­tions fell off the way­side after Mané was sacked and Mauri­cio Pochet­tino stepped in.  Those are just a micro­cosm of the adver­sity that Espanyol have to endure in order to stay in first divi­sion this season.