In Spain, for more than a decade, the hierarchy has been very clear. FC Barcelona and Real Madrid are battling it out at the top of the pyramid, followed very closely by Atlético de Madrid, which manages, from time to time, to get involved in the title race. And behind this infernal trio, it is Sevilla which has long occupied this place as the fourth biggest club in the country, having seized a place which previously belonged mainly to Valencia. However, for some time now, the Andalusians have been struggling. There was this victory in the Europa League last season, it’s true, but it came to make up a disastrous season in the championship. It was the new impetus brought by the arrival of Mendilibar which allowed the club to recover a little, both in La Liga and on the European scene.
This season, this positive dynamic from the second part of last season quickly faded and the team started particularly badly, with the team currently thirteenth, three small points above the red zone. The Sevillians did not even manage to qualify for the next rounds of their favorite competition, the Europa League, having finished in a sad fourth place in a Champions League group that was not so tough on paper. Clearly, Seville is in crisis. There are sporting reasons, first of all. The squad is therefore probably much worse than in previous years on paper. A club accustomed to selling its best players each summer while finding replacements of a similar level and potential or even better, Sevilla has often missed out in recent years. The superb central hinge composed of Diego Carlos and Jules Koundé has, for example, never been qualitatively replaced.
Above all, there is a glaring lack of stability. This player trading policy is therefore detrimental, where in Spain, the trend is rather towards stability. Teams like Real Sociedad or even neighbors Betis, who have maintained a huge hard core for years already, have seized the available European places thanks to well-established groups and this ability to retain their best elements. Difficult – in the case of Sevilla – to be competitive by changing half the team every year from the moment the newcomers are not up to standard. Instability in the locker room, but not only that. Monchi, who was already criticized enough, for example left the club last summer. If he had had a little more difficulty making his magic work in the transfer window for a while, he remained a strong man of the house who still guaranteed a certain security and serenity internally. He was also the club’s lightning rod in tough times. His successor, Victor Orta, had a particularly bad summer transfer window and made a series of somewhat questionable decisions, such as the appointment of Uruguayan coach Diego Alonso, who did not win any of the 12 matches he managed…
With the appointment of Quique Sanchez Flores, Sevilla has already had 3 different coaches this season. Worse still, there have been 5 coaches over the last 15 months, i.e. a change of coach every 3 months on average. Difficult, in these conditions, to hope for anything… Here too, the comparison with other clubs hurts. On the Girona side, for example, we continued to trust Michel last season, when the team had a string of bad results. And now, the Catalans are first and their coach is the main architect, in addition to being hailed as one of the best coaches of the moment by public opinion and by experts. We are obviously obliged to mention the institutional crisis that the club is going through, with clan wars and president Pepe Castro who will leave office. José María Del Nido Carrasco, vice-president and son of a former president, with whom he is also at odds, should take over.
Sevilla is a very divided club internally, where Monchi reconciled all these beautiful people a little, and once he left, the war started again with a vengeance. A complicated situation for years, moreover, and we can say it, the good results obtained on the European scene have often been the tree which hid the forest of a club far from being as stable and exemplary as that in its management. There are indeed also obvious financial problems, and Sevilla is far from being one of the good students of the Spanish championship in this regard. The club’s debt thus amounts to 90 million euros. Which will inevitably have a negative influence on the upcoming transfer window. Suffice to say that Quique Sanchez Flores has his work cut out for him.
