La Liga 2009/2010: A Season Preview (Part Two)

Con­tin­u­ing the La Liga pre­view, part two will dis­cuss the next seven teams in alpha­bet­i­cal order: Málaga, Mal­lorca, Osasuna, Rac­ing San­tander, Real Madrid, Sevilla, and Sport­ing Gijón.

Málaga

Will Málaga stave off the sec­ond sea­son syn­drome?  After a cou­ple of sea­sons in La Liga Ade­lante, Málaga rose from the lower divi­sion with a vengeance as they fin­ished eighth in La Liga and com­peted for a Euro­pean place for the major­ity of the sea­son.  The man who led them down into Liga Ade­lante, Anto­nio Tapia, in 2006, returned in 2008 after the man­ager who led them back into La Liga, Juan Ramón López Muñiz, left to man­age Rac­ing San­tander.  Tapia made up for his pre­vi­ous mis­takes and proved the faith that the Málaga board of direc­tors afforded him.

After the sea­son, Tapia left to man­age rel­e­gated Real Betis, and Juan Muñiz returned after an unsuc­cess­ful sea­son with Rac­ing.  Along with Tapia, some of the impor­tant play­ers from the pre­vi­ous sea­son also left.  Duda and Lolo returned to Sevilla after their season-long loans, Nacho went back to Getafe after his loan, Eliseu trans­ferred to Lazio for €1 mil­lion, and Javier Calleja moved to Osasuna on a free trans­fer.  The most intrigu­ing sign­ings for Málaga include Barcelona youth prod­uct Xavi Tor­res, a defen­sive mid­fielder who shows the promise of effec­tively replac­ing Lolo in front of the defen­sive line, and Selim Bena­chour, a Tunisian inter­na­tional play­maker who has a point to prove to Tunisian national team man­ager Hum­berto Coelho about his recom­mit­ment to his fit­ness and work ethic.  Despite these addi­tions, Málaga will not fare as well as they did in the pre­vi­ous sea­son, and a lower table fin­ish is more likely.

Mal­lorca

Will Mal­lorca be the team that floun­dered in rel­e­ga­tion form for the first half of last sea­son or the club that fin­ished with a flurry and fought their way into ninth place at the end of the cam­paign?  The spark of their sec­ond half run was the vision and play­mak­ing of Juan Arango.  While scor­ing eight goals him­self, his best attribute was his abil­ity to set up his team­mates into scor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties.  Aritz Aduriz and José Jurado were the main bene­fac­tors of Arango’s pin­point accu­rate passes as they net­ted twenty goals between them.  Jurado returned to Atlético Madrid because his loan spell ended, and Mal­lorca sold Arango to Borus­sia Mönchenglad­bach for €3.6 million.

Recent sign­ing Ser­gio Tejera will try to fill the void as Mallorca’s num­ber 10.  A prod­uct of the Espanyol and Chelsea youth acad­e­mies, Chelsea ini­tially loaned him out to Mal­lorca in Feb­ru­ary 2009 as Mal­lorca strug­gled in La Liga.  He impressed the Mal­lorca brass to the point where they signed Tejera to a per­ma­nent deal for four years.  Pierre Webó and Alhas­sane Keita will fight to receive the starts that José Jurado had, and Aduriz will need another solid sea­son to keep the con­ti­nu­ity within the attack­ing third.

Another key for Mal­lorca to main­tain their win­ning men­tal­ity is the sta­bil­ity of the goal­keeper posi­tion.  Ger­mán Lux, Miguel Ángel Moyá, and Dudu Aouate each spent about a third of the sea­son as the start­ing goal­keeper, and this insta­bil­ity in an impor­tant posi­tion will neg­a­tively affect a mid-table team.  While Moyá was the start­ing goal­keeper, he had con­stant nag­ging injuries in the past two years that lim­ited his num­ber of appear­ances.  Lux became the starter due to these injuries but lost his job with the sign­ing of Aouate from Deportivo La Coruña in the Jan­u­ary trans­fer win­dow.  Aouate was the goal­keeper for the major­ity of the sec­ond half of the sea­son, where Mal­lorca played their best foot­ball.  Because of these per­for­mances, Mal­lorca even­tu­ally sold Moyá to Valen­cia for €6 mil­lion dur­ing the sum­mer trans­fer win­dow, secur­ing Aouate as the first-choice goal­keeper.  If Aouate keeps to the high level of per­for­mance he set last year, Mal­lorca should fin­ish at another mid-table position.

Osasuna

Will Osasuna score enough goals to stay away from rel­e­ga­tion?  Osasuna had the third worst attack in La Liga, only net­ting more than rel­e­gated clubs Numan­cia and Recre­ativo Huelva.  Los Rojil­los were for­tu­nate as their last two matches of the sea­son came against Barcelona and Real Madrid respec­tively; by that point, Barcelona sewed up the league title and thus fielded a mostly reserve team, and Real Madrid had noth­ing for which to play because sec­ond place was guar­an­teed and also started a reserve team.  Osasuna won these two games and was one point above the rel­e­ga­tion point total.

Osasuna had the third best defense in La Liga, only allow­ing forty-seven goals, and with the defen­sive line intact from last sea­son, the defense should be the solid unit they were a year ago.  Aging Argen­tinean striker Wal­ter Pan­di­ani will lead the attack, with Masoud Sho­jaei and €1.2 mil­lion sum­mer sign­ing Car­los Aranda sup­port­ing.  Absent from this year’s squad is Jaroslav Plašil, the Czech inter­na­tional who buoyed the attack from the left wing with his mazy runs on the flank and his slash­ing abil­ity while cut­ting inside.  He led Osasuna with seven assists while adding four goals to his account.  With­out Plašil, Masoud and fel­low Iran­ian inter­na­tional Javad Nek­ounam will have to take more respon­si­bil­ity with pass­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion to the for­wards so that the potency of the attack will increase to a higher proficiency.

Rac­ing Santander

Will new man­ager Juan Car­los Mandiá inspire a Rac­ing San­tander team that mired in medi­oc­rity last year?  Mandiá has had man­age­r­ial suc­cess in the past, help­ing Hér­cules CF be pro­moted from the Segúnda División B to the Segúnda División in 2005, man­ag­ing Real Madrid Castilla, Real Madrid’s reserve team, to within a point of pro­mo­tion play­offs of Segúnda División B in 2007, and nearly pro­mot­ing Hér­cules CF into La Liga in his sec­ond stint at the club last season.

The team Mandiá inher­its has tal­ent but seemed to have a lack of direc­tion.  Pedro Muni­tis’ cre­ativ­ity was as inspir­ing as ever, con­struct­ing goals for Nikola Zigic, Jonathan Pereira and Mohammed Tchité.  Unfor­tu­nately, for Rac­ing, Jonathan and Zigic were on loan and went back to their teams, Vil­lar­real and Valen­cia respec­tively. With the devel­op­ment of nineteen-year-old Argentina future star­let Brian Sarmiento, Sarmiento will shine because of the part­ner­ship with Tchité up front and the inge­nu­ity of Muni­tis.  Mandiá‘s expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing young play­ers will also aid in Sarmiento’s maturity.

The defense was solid, only con­ced­ing forty-eight goals, fifth in La Liga, but the two start­ing cen­tral defend­ers, Iván Mar­cano and Eze­quiel Garay, are gone.  Vil­lar­real bought the young, tal­ented Mar­cano for €6 mil­lion, and Garay returned to Real Madrid after his loan spell at San­tander.  Rac­ing made a shrewd sign­ing in Marc Tor­re­jón, the twenty-three year old cen­tral defender from Espanyol.  Los­ing his start­ing spot to Nicolás Pareja, Tor­re­jón will have a point to prove and should pair well with either Sevilla loa­nee José Ángel Cre­spo or vet­eran Racin­guista José Moratón.  Mandiá will have a team that under­achieved last sea­son, and both par­ties will want to estab­lish them­selves as forces in La Liga.

Real Madrid

Will the hun­dreds of mil­lions of Euros spent on trans­fers equal a La Liga title?  The sec­ond galác­ti­cos era with the return of Flo­rentino Pérez has been well doc­u­mented, but now that the cam­paign is going to com­mence within a week’s time, Real Madrid needs to pro­duce results from the begin­ning.  Most of the big money sign­ings will most likely start, so expect Cris­tiano Ronaldo, Kaká, Karim Ben­zema, Raúl Albiol, Álvaro Arbe­loa, and Xabi Alonso to start imme­di­ately.  Cur­rent Real Madrid and for­mer Vil­lar­real man­ager Manuel Pel­le­grini has the envi­able task of piec­ing this puz­zle together, and he knows a sub-par sea­son (any­thing less than cham­pi­ons) based on lofty expec­ta­tions will most likely lead to his sacking.

Pre­vi­ous his­tory shows that this first sea­son with all the new trans­fers will most likely be the best sea­son to win tro­phies.  When Pérez started his first reign, Real Madrid were very suc­cess­ful in his first cou­ple of years, but after win­ning La Liga in 2002–2003, Madrid went tro­phy­less for the next three cam­paigns.  Many the­o­ries have been posited about why they could not win with all the world-class play­ers they pos­sessed, but the con­sen­sus agrees that a lack of atten­tion to the defense led to their downfall.

Pérez did not make this same mis­take in his sec­ond era with the sign­ings of Albiol and Arbe­loa in defense, the loan return of Eze­quiel Garay from Rac­ing San­tander, and the sign­ing of Xabi Alonso as the glue in the mid­field with Las­sana Diarra.  There is no doubt that Real Madrid will be suc­cess­ful, and if there is no lull in play dur­ing their La Liga cam­paign, they will pose a big­ger threat to Barcelona, but if there is a period where Madrid has a two or three game streak with­out a win, will the egos even­tu­ally clash inside the dress­ing room?  If Pel­le­grini effec­tively man­ages the per­son­al­i­ties and char­ac­ters inside the club with aplomb, Los Merengues will have at least one tro­phy this year.

Sevilla

Can Sevilla break the glass ceil­ing and break the Real Madrid-Barcelona duop­oly?  In the past five sea­sons, only Vil­lar­real in 2007–2008 broke into the top two.  Sevilla fin­ished fifth, third, fifth, and third in the last four sea­sons, and in that time, they devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for being hard to break down in defense.  They allowed only thirty-nine goals last cam­paign, sec­ond to Barcelona, and there is an argu­ment that Sevilla’s defen­sive four is bet­ter than Barcelona’s back four.  The dif­fer­ence between Sevilla and Barcelona defen­sively is that Barcelona’s mid­field and for­ward lines play a more highly press­ing style to regain pos­ses­sion and play their pos­ses­sion foot­ball to keep the ball away from the opposition.

Of the defend­ers that fea­tured on a reg­u­lar basis, Aquiv­aldo Mos­quera is the only one not with the team this year, as Sevilla sold him to Club América for €4.2 mil­lion.  In response to Mosquera’s depar­ture, Sevilla spent €4 mil­lion on Espanyol defender Ser­gio Sánchez, and he will most likely be the start­ing right back when the sea­son starts.

Already a tal­ented team from its start­ing eleven to the fringe bench play­ers, Sevilla bol­stered its mid­field with the return of Duda, Lolo, and Ale­jan­dro Alfaro from loan, and sign­ing of defen­sive mid­fielder Didier Zokora from Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur for €10 mil­lion.  Up front, the two best off­sea­son moves only involved one sign­ing.  Sevilla won the bat­tle against Hull City and Real Zaragoza to sign Álvaro Negredo for €14 mil­lion and should pro­vide cover for Frédéric Kanouté and Luis Fabi­ano.  The sec­ond move was keep­ing Luis Fabi­ano from trans­fer­ring to AC Milan.  Milan report­edly offered €14 mil­lion for Fabi­ano, but Sevilla sought after a fig­ure closer to his €26 mil­lion buy­out clause.  Although he had an incon­sis­tent sea­son, he pro­vides the speed and guile to pair with the phys­i­cal­ity and height of both Kanoute and Negredo.  Despite these improve­ments, the qual­ity of Barcelona and the sheer bought tal­ent of Real Madrid will most likely keep Los Sevil­lis­tas from the top two, but third place and another Cham­pi­ons League group stage place is imminent.

Sport­ing Gijón

Will Sport­ing Gijón shore up the worst defense in La Liga to sur­vive another top-flight sea­son?  The raw num­bers are fright­en­ing.  Gijón con­ceded seventy-nine goals, ten more then rel­e­gated Numan­cia, and in seven matches, Gijón lost by three or more goals.  Many pun­dits and fans alike admired their gung ho atti­tude, and their motto through­out the sea­son seemed to be one of “Beat or get beaten.”  Because of this atti­tude, they only had one drawn result, 1–1 against Ath­letic Bil­bao, and a league high twenty-three losses, seven more than rel­e­gated Real Betis.

To bol­ster the defense, three of Gijón’s trans­ac­tions involved defend­ers.  Joni López returned on loan from FC Barcelona Atlètic, Barcelona’s reserve team, with valu­able expe­ri­ence play­ing with future Barcelona defen­sive stars Marc Muniesa and Andre Fontàs; Gré­gory Arno­lin arrived from Vitória Guimarães on a free trans­fer, pro­vid­ing a solid defender who proved him­self in the Por­tuguese Liga; and Alberto Botía, a young defender on loan from Barcelona.

The mid­field and the for­wards keep their con­ti­nu­ity from the pre­vi­ous sea­son with Mate Bilic and David Bar­ral scor­ing twenty-two goals com­bined up front and Diego Cas­tro, Diego Cama­cho, and Carmelo patrolling the mid­field.  Gijón scored enough goals to com­pete at the top level, but the mid­field would some­times leave their defen­sive duties and leave their back four iso­lated against some of the most potent offenses in the world.  Expect Los Roji­blan­cos to allow fewer goals than last year but still be near the bot­tom of the league in goals allowed.  For their sake, Gijón needs to be more con­ser­v­a­tive to stay in La Liga for another year, but their insis­tence to win a match is refresh­ing when com­pared to teams that flood their own defen­sive third in order to main­tain a draw.

Tagged as: málaga, Mallorca, Osasuna, racing santander, real madrid, sevilla, Sporting Gijón