A few months ago, Espanyol celebrated its return to La Liga after winning the playoffs for promotion to D1. A return to the elite of Spanish football after a short season in the hell of the second division, for a club whose place is clearly among the best 20 teams in the country and which is one of the best Iberian training centers. But things don’t really go as planned… The summer was already complicated, with the Martin Braithwaite controversy. Author of 22 goals in 43 games last season, the Danish striker was one of the main architects of the return of Pericos in La Liga. But he left the club this summer, in the middle of an open war with its management, thanks to a €600,000 clause that he himself paid… Worse still, his departure was made official only a few hours after his traditional visit. medical recovery with Espanyol…
Subsequently, the former Barça explained that the extension proposal formulated by the Barcelona management was ridiculous, and in this story, the supporters sided with the player who subsequently left for Gremio in Brazil. The start of a very complicated summer, with only €400,000 spent during the winter transfer window and a majority of recruits who are already proving to be flops, like Argentinian striker Alejo Véliz (1 goal in 12 games) . The preamble to a season which turns out, unsurprisingly, to be disastrous. Eighteenth in the La Liga standings, the Catalan team has just been eliminated by a D4 during the second round of the Copa del Rey. A catastrophic sporting situation for a club which can still count on a few nice players in the squad, like the club-trained striker Javi Puado, whose days in Catalonia are logically numbered, or the goalkeeper Joan Garcia, coveted in the Premier League.
A president who speaks via AI
The story of Espanyol could, in most people’s eyes, be that of a simple, rather poorly managed and sportingly struggling club like there are in spades across Europe. Where it becomes almost lunar is that during his last appearance in front of the club’s shareholders, the president Chen Yansheng, who had not shown his face for more than a year, spoke via… ‘artificial intelligence. Indeed, the video published by Espanyol shows the Chinese businessman expressing himself in a video that clearly seems generated by AI, as shown by the few expressions displayed on his face, or the fact that his hands, poorly modeled, do not move at all for several minutes. Enough to unleash theories of all kinds on social networks…
Even if he wanted to be reassuring in this real-false media appearance, Chen Yansheng is not fooling anyone. With 17 million euros in losses over the last financial year, Espanyol is in great difficulty and does not have a lot of assets that could put the club back in the green. The Champions League objectives expressed by the Rastar group at the time of the takeover in 2016 no longer seem like a distant farce. Proof that the situation is totally absurd, the club could soon be bought by… Martin Braithwaite. The former Espanyol striker, who is one of the richest men on the planet thanks mainly to his investments in real estate, could simply take over the club and kick out the current management. A little vendetta that would be rather welcome…
The fans can’t take it anymore
It must be said that in Barcelona, we suspect that the financial setbacks are even more serious than those presented in the media. Always because of the catastrophic management of the club. A review of the club’s accounts, for example, showed that the club paid a substantial amount of 6 million euros to terminate the contracts of two players this summer, unheard of for a club that does not roll on gold. base. Distraught, the supporters actually can’t take it anymore. They regularly demonstrate in front of the Chinese consulate in Barcelona to demand the departure of the Chinese investment group, in the face of disbelieving citizens of the Asian country who probably do not understand all this commotion.
Fans have little reason to be optimistic for the future. Joan Fitó, financial director of the club, has also announced that there will be no recruits this winter. Manolo Gonzalez, Barcelona coach, will therefore have to deal with the means at hand. Even in the event of continuation, the supporters know that the best players – including those mentioned above – will be sold to plug the holes and the sporting management of the club has not shown itself to have a particularly hollow nose in the transfer window to be able to replace them qualitatively. A club adrift which, like Valencia or Granada, proves Javier Tebas right in his crusade against the arrival of foreign capital in Spanish clubs…
