A Real Mess At Real Mallorca

Oh, Real Mallorca, how you manage to really make yourself a real old laughing stock. This ridiculous club, subjected in the recent past to the indebtedness of the Drac Group and Vicente Grande, to the absurdly grandiose ambitions of the Walter Mitty-like Paul Davidson and to the brief and unhappy interregnum of the Marti Mingarro family and the club’s entry into voluntary administration, was meant to have headed into calmer waters with a new ownership and a new team at its helm, its main face being that of vice-president, major shareholder, sporting director and indeed former coach, Llorenç Serra Ferrer.

That new team, which comprised Ferrer, Miguel Angel Nadal, Rafa’s uncle and former Spanish centre-back, and Pedro Terrasa as director, didn’t stay together long. Terrasa went off to the television station IB3, then he decided to go back to the club, which he did in July. It was then that the latest round of in-fighting started to get under way.

It has culminated in accusations that Terrasa has been conspiring to overthrow Ferrer and take over the club himself. This comes against a further backdrop of the club’s possible sale to an unnamed Swiss group, willing it would appear to pump 30 million euros in, but which now seems to have disappeared, and of the resignation of Danish coach Michael Laudrup, whose right-hand man, Erik Larsen, had branded Ferrer a “bad man”.

Laudrup had been handed something of a bum steer for the new La Liga season, star midfielder Jonathan De Guzmán being sold to Villarreal, a club with which there is bad blood over last season’s Europa League qualification, and no obvious strikers being available once Pierre Webó had left. Terrasa went on record as describing Ferrer as inept in the handling of the transfer of Belgian forward Marvin Ogunjimi who will be a Mallorca player, but not until January, the transfer-window deadline having been bungled.

The club’s board, ahead of a meeting to decide Terrasa’s future, was split and became even more split just before the meeting when it was announced that the board’s representation by the Nadal family, which owns ten per cent of the club, was to be withdrawn. Miguel Angel Nadal was close to Laudrup, who was once a team-mate at Barcelona. The Nadals have not confirmed as yet whether they will sell out.

One member of the board whose attitude towards Terrasa was unknown prior to the meeting was Utz Claassen, a German businessman, the third largest shareholder in Real Mallorca and the former president of German club Hannover 96. Claassen, who joined the board almost a year ago, came in with the sort of publicity that unfortunately reminded one of Davidson; foreign fans would soon be winging their way down to Palma to watch Real on the back of improving the club’s brand name in key European tourism markets.

The extraordinary meeting of the board, in the end, resulted in Terrasa expressing his “sincere loyalty” to the club. Various apologies were offered and accepted, and so all is hunky-dory. For now.

The board does, though, also face an issue with regard to the club’s old ground, the Lluis Sitjar stadium, which it, the board, reckons is going to be redevloped. Palma town hall and its mayor have been seeking guarantees regarding the 200 million euros of foreign money which is said to be going to be available for the redevelopment scheme. The town hall appears to be fast running out of patience and has insisted that the club makes sure that work is carried out on the abandoned stadium to prevent it from becoming a risk to the public.

In addition to not exactly endearing itself to the town hall, the club has managed to also make an ass of itself with talk of Luis Aragonés, the coach of Spain’s World Cup-winning side, taking over from Laudrup. Unfortunately, Aragonés wanted two million a year for himself and his assistants, the sort of money that Mallorca most certainly doesn’t have.

Despite all the shenanigans at the club, the team has – quite remarkably – managed to rise above them. It has performed well, even if it nearly managed to clutch relegation from the jaws of mid-table safety on the last day of last season. A return of seven points from six games, putting Mallorca tenth in La Liga at present, is reasonable, all things considered.

But the club, if not the team, stumble from one crisis to another. It would be astonishing if the team could manage to survive another season in La Liga, and it might all depend on Joaquín Caparrós, formerly at Seville, La Coruña and Bilbao, and now confirmed as the new coach. But don’t put it past the team surviving. It has proved resilient, but no thanks to the club’s board.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Football: A Family Game

Some football’s happening tomorrow. I had quite forgotten that the season was still with us, and had all but forgotten that Capello and England any longer existed. But they do, and they’re playing Switzerland. Has the FA’s favourite gnome of Zurich, Sepp Blatter, been invited along for the prawn sandwiches, do you suppose?

Actual games of football no longer seem to matter. It’s all the other stuff that is so entertaining, and some of it is in Spain. Take Real Mallorca. A team that can contrive to almost be relegated on the last day of the season, having spent the entire season in mid-table obscurity, takes some beating.

Dottiness is never far away from Real Mallorca, and now the club is seeking to become the Brentford of La Liga; major shareholder and vice-president Llorenç Serra Ferrer possibly taking over the coaching reins. Serra, the Ron Noades, chairman/team manager, of Spanish football. To be fair to Serra, he is actually a coach; Ron just lived his own odd dream.

Real Brentford, once described by Sid Lowe of “The Guardian” as “rubbish” and having no fans, charges which revealed that there were indeed some fans, as they leapt to the club’s defence, has, despite nearly clutching relegation defeat from the victory of staying in La Liga, been honoured in Sid’s annual Sids. Just. Two players, Nunes and De Guzmán, are on the subs bench for Lowe’s team of the season. And De Guzmán’s an interesting character. Is he Dutch, is he Jamaican, is he Canadian? What is he exactly? Owen Hargreaves with his knees still intact.

Far, far more interesting, however, are the shenanigans at the Banana Republic of FIFA, and its own Spanish connection. Blatter has proved, like Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Belarus’s Lukashenko, that a touch of pretend democracy can go a long way in keeping a dictator in power. The delegates walked up, two by two, entering the ark above the flood that never really threatened to wash Sepp away, and dropped their voting slips into the box, watched on by Sepp muttering, “there, now, you know you’re doing the right thing”.

Among the members of the FIFA “family” who turned on the bleating black sheep Bernstein of the English FA was another interesting character. Spain’s very own Sepp: Ángel María Villar Llona, the president of the Spanish football federation. Villar Llona’s been in power even longer than Blatter has. He’s carved out his own fiefdom. And like Blatter, a certain amount of mud has attached itself to his hands and knees.

Back in November, a judge formally archived charges that had been open against Villar Llona for several years. Despite, I quote, “abominable management in accounting for trips, expenses and purchase of foreign currency” as well as various other criticisms, the judge found that the president and other directors of the federation should be absolved of charges of impropriety.

On being re-elected, yet again, as president in 2008, the head of La Liga said of Villar Llona’s re-election that this would mean “the union between all the families of football”. Football certainly is a family game, and “allegations”, that “beautiful English word”, as Villar Llona taunted the FA with, should not be made about families.

In the 2008 election, when he was unopposed, Villar Llona polled 87% of the votes, a bit short of the 92% Blatter secured in Zurich, but pretty good going after 20 years. There was clearly no problem for him in that, two years before, he had managed to stun delegates at a UEFA conference by arguing that too much attention was being paid to racism in football.

It should have come as no great surprise that Villar Llona joined the queue to give the FA a good kick in the shins in Zurich. During the gathering to divvy up the spoils of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, Villar Llona, rounding on those accusing FIFA of corruption (i.e. the British media), said: “FIFA is clean and does things with honesty. All of you (members of FIFA) are honest and hard-working and are concerned only for football”.

Ah, the beautiful game, the beautiful family game, adorned by Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and Guardiola’s wonderful Barcelona. But even Barça can’t avoid being dragged in. Villar Llona has spawned a word. “Villaroto”. José Mourinho has used it, the Madrid football papers have used it. It refers to the alleged bias of the Barça-supporting president against Real Madrid.

Barça, more than a club. Football, more than a game. I nearly forgot, there’s one on tomorrow.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Kill The Dog – Why the British don’t watch Real Mallorca

What do you do on a Sunday afternoon? Any time between, say, three and six? In the UK, you may settle down on the sofa to watch the football, or you may be in a bar, watching the football. In Mallorca, you may settle down on the sofa to watch the football, or you may be in a bar, watching football. Wherever you are, what in all likelihood you are watching is the Premier League, unless you’re German, in which case you’ll be taking in the Bundesliga. If you’re more of a nerdy football fan, you may eschew your home leagues, the leagues from where you come, in favour of some other league – La Liga, for example. If you’re even more of a nerdy football fan, you may eschew those home leagues in favour of Real Mallorca; you might even go, if you happen to be in Mallorca.

I may be wrong, but before Paul Davidson came depth-plumbing and blowing his pipes full of what turned out to be fool’s gold I don’t recall “The Bulletin” devoting particular attention to the club or team. Prior to this, I didn’t pay much attention to Real either. It was the Davidson farce that made the club worthy of anything other than indifference, so the British angle can be said to have stimulated attention. The paper’s only regular column on current matters Mallorcan is about Real, and it is now – in association with the club – offering a package to the remaining home games. There is more than just a touch of desperation about this appeal to the British football fan to come and put his bum on one of the thousands of empty seats at the ONO. Look at the games coming up and you might wonder why there has to be such an appeal. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia have all yet to play in Palma this season. If these games can’t be sold out well in advance, you do have to ask whether Mallorca deserves a La Liga side. The stadium does, after all, have a capacity of no more than 25,000.

There are several reasons why the expat would not take up the offer. Take one – telly. What do you do on a Sunday afternoon? This coming Sunday afternoon, Liverpool will be playing Blackburn, Bayern Munich will be up against Hamburg in a top-four clash in the Bundesliga. Mallorca may be away, but even were the team to be at home – against Vallodolid – the result would be the same. Premier League, Bundesliga take precedence. It matters not that one’s own team may not be playing. The home leagues are as much a part of the expat football fan’s make-up as the team he actually supports, as are the cultures of those leagues – styles of play and even the language; the language of the terrace transported to the bar. Sing when you’re winning? You wouldn’t know what to sing at Real Mallorca, even if the fans did actually sing.

Going to a Mallorca game is at best an occasional thing, if at all. It falls into the category of being one of those things that should be done at some stage. A home match against Barça might well be that “stage”. One against Gijon or Getafe? Your expat football fan would be hard pushed to have ever heard of either of them, let alone be able to locate them on a map of the mainland or even pronounce them. There is arguably greater interest among tourists than residents where Mallorca games are concerned, but this interest is part of the holiday experience and stems from a not insignificant motivation on behalf of the football fan to be able to say that he has been to such and such a ground. I once stood among a couple of thousand grumpy-looking Swiss all chomping on Wurst und Kartoffelchips during a God-awful pre-season friendly between Grasshopper Zürich and some other team whose name escapes me. And all because I could say I’d been, and to the ground of a team with a mad name, to boot.

Adopting another team is one thing. Many football fans are prone to this. But to swap allegiance from the original team, from the original league is quite another. It would be like giving up a desire for curry and bacon and eggs in favour of Mallorcan sobrasada sausage and the ensaimada. It just doesn’t happen like this. Football, football teams, football leagues are too ingrained into the fan’s footballing psyche. Which makes me wonder as to those who go native in support of a local team, Real in this case. La Liga may well be one of the two or three “best” leagues in world football, but it’s not your expat football fan’s league; it’s someone else’s, something to perhaps be admired, but not to get fanatical about.

Yes of course, take in the odd Real Mallorca match. God knows they need all the support and money they can lay their hands on, but don’t let’s believe that your average expat footy fans are about to abandon the Premier League or Bundesliga bar in their droves, because they’re not. Perhaps the stronger message coming from Real Mallorca should be – if you don’t come this season, you might never come if the club goes the way of all Portsmouths, ejected from the Premier mother ship without even a parachute payment. This would be along the lines of “if you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog”. A threat in other words. Now then, threats. That’s the language your football fan understands.

QUIZ – Who threatened to kill the dog? Famous magazine cover. (I’m sure it was also an album cover by the same “group”, but maybe I imagined this.)

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

In A World Of Contradictions

Returning to a couple of recent stories – the line-up for Palma’s Sant Sebastià fiesta and the ongoing troubles at Real Mallorca.

Palma town hall is copping some flak over the promotion of the fiesta, both in terms of the concentration on the music angle and for not having international acts and not giving greater prominence to local Catalan artists. All very contradictory, but ’twas ever thus. Various cultural and music sorts have voiced their views to the “Diario”, one saying that there should be greater attention paid to other events, e.g. gastronomy (always gastronomy), and our old friends Músics per la Llengua (who were helpful with some enquiries in the summer) arguing that less well-known Catalan acts should be given centre stage (or stages) in Palma. The chap from the Diario’s own radio station is the one who is bemoaning the absence of international artists.

They are all right in their different ways, but the contradictions just go to underline a further criticism of the organisers, that they don’t have a “clear project”. Well they wouldn’t do if people keep offering them different possibilities. Something, though, that needs to be remembered is that Sant Sebastià has two evenings of major ents – one the music, the other the fire-runs and fireworks (assuming the town hall agrees to fireworks this coming January). Both evenings should demand equal weighting, so the criticism of the concentration on the music is partially valid, but nevertheless it – the music – has become synonymous with Sant Sebastià and there is no other island fiesta that has such a long list of acts and such a number of stages. It is curious that the desire for less focus on the music comes from the editor of “Youthing”, the “yoof” what’s on publication that has nicked the presentation of “Time Out” magazine. It is the absence of international acts, which might help to attract an overseas visitor and which might also give greater impulse to overseas marketing, that is the most valid criticism. But if the town hall hasn’t got the money, and it has had to cut its budgets, then it shouldn’t be criticised that harshly.

Having said though that Palma council might be a touch brassic, this isn’t stopping them planning to buy the former stadium of Real Mallorca, which has been abandoned for years, is derelict and a rare old eyesore. Unlike the current stadium, the club actually owns a part of the old stadium, around a third. So for the town hall to be sniffing around with a cheque book at the ready might sound like good news for a club in such an impecunious state as Real Mallorca is. There again, the town hall places a value of around 18 million euros on the decaying old pile, one that it wants to develop as another conference centre. The group of owners reckon it’s worth a minimum of 25 million and won’t sell for anything less, which will mean endless discussions and little hope of Real Mallorca getting its hands on some much-needed readies. Not that six million or eight or nine million would go that far when your debts are some ten times greater than any sale revenue. But anything would do just at the moment, for here is a club in serious danger of being booted down the football food chain, i.e. out of La Liga. 

Meanwhile, the accusations grow against the now disgraced all but brief owners, the Martí Mingarros and their company, Safin. “The Bulletin” has a fan who does a good regular column about the club, and he has consistently been a supporter of the knight in shining armour, Mateu Alemany, who re-emerges at times of regular crisis to put the club back on its feet. Yet even he now suggests that Alemany might have been more diligent in trawling the internet for evidence of the suitability, or not, of the Mingarros and Safin. Apparently, one can find evidence of unsuitability, so questions might legitimately be asked as to whether Alemany was precipitate in selling to Safin.

January Came

The autumn fairs season well under way, planning for the winter fiestas also starts. The most spectacular of these is Sant Sebastià in Palma in January. Palma council has announced the ents, the music acts that will play in various squares around the city. In 2008, the organisers branched out. There was a bit of a hiccup surrounding Earth Wind & Fire who weren’t really Earth Wind & Fire – more Sod Breeze & Damp Squib – but there was an ELO incarnation, all part of a certain internationalisation of the event, itself with the aim, or so it was said, of broadening appeal and attracting more overseas visitors. 

Unfortunately, economic reality has bitten, and the council has had to trim its budgets. The town hall deserves some sympathy – all the ents are, after all, free – but it is a shame that this international element will be missing this January, as it was this year. Sant Sebastià should be the focal event for whatever tourism can be attracted in the fallow month of January, and while it does attract some, a more adventurous line-up might help to boost numbers. For this coming January, the acts read rather like many a Mallorcan fiesta, usual suspects such as Tomeu Penya and a boasting as to how many of the bands will be performing in Catalan. So much for international appeal. Perhaps the tourism authorities might like to consider diverting some of the money they spend on questionable winter promotions to Sant Sebastià and giving it a real boost. Not, though, that this would help the north of the island. But if winter tourism is going to be primarily Palma-centric, then so this fiesta should be given more of an official leg-up.

While it’s fair enough to promote Catalan musicians, one of the great advantages of English-singing acts is that they contribute to a learning of English. Music, as much as other forms of communication, is an effective conduit for stimulating language interest and learning. With this in mind, it is interesting to hear of a report from the Oxford University Press into the study of English and English ability among the people of the Balearics. One out of three have never studied the language, and of those who have, the standards are not necessarily that high. Yet, a great majority of islanders recognise the importance of English. Which is as it should be, not because it makes expats’ lives easier, but because of the fundamental importance of the English-speaking tourism market and the opportunities that the language affords. 

 

Twisting the knife

How much would you spend on a loo-roll holder? Would you even bother? There is something to be said for the loo-roll holder being a largely superfluous item of bathroom furniture. But assuming you might decide that today is the day to go out and acquire that much-needed new holder, would you divvy up 319 euros? Probably not. This, though, is what one such holder in the house of Jaume Matas (following on from yesterday) cost. Twisting the knife indeed, and it was the “Diario” doing so in an hilarious piece about holders, loos and bidets chez Matas. And by the way. Do you know what the Spanish is for lavatory? No? Well, it is “váter”. Think about it.

And if not the former president getting it in the neck, then it must be the recently departed owners who never were of Real Mallorca. Now that Alemany is back in charge, his chaps are giving the books a good once-over. He has lodged a “denuncia” against the Martí Mingarro clan, and one of the slight anomalies to come to light is that the club’s credit cards were used for visits to what the press terms “locales nocturnos”, which may cover a multitude of sins or may not.