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Villarreal is now training at the Manga Club in Murcia (strange name, but it looks very nice) and will play a friendly against Almeria tomorrow. Villarreal's travel agency has offered free bus travel for those interested in making the trip down from Vila-real, and four buses are apparently going. Not bad, though this game won't have the atmosphere of our last match against Almeria!
Bojan Jokic has been named to the Slovenian side to take on Finland in a friendly on August 14. Congrats to him.
Ex-Villarreal forward Airam Cabrera has another club--this time it's Cadiz. Well, he will be wearing yellow again. They play in the Segunda B.
Also playing in the Segunda B next season, sadly, will be Mirandés, who league president Tebas announced had been relegated for financial irregularities. This means Iriome, who had just signed with them, will be back down in the third tier, just as he was with Villarreal B.
Word is this probably means Racing Santander will be awarded the vacant place in the Segunda, but we may not be done yet. Alcorcon and Depor have a deadline of tomorrow to resolve various payment issues, and Tebas is also keen to investigate Herculés for match-fixing. It was also confirmed Murcia would remain in the Segunda in place of Guadalajara, so our ex-coach Velázquez gets to start out in the Segunda again.
Of course, if Tebas were to apply the same rules to the Primera, we would have very few teams left. Elche/Valencia/Levante are owned by the Valencian Government now, effectively, and most of the other clubs owe the Spanish government millions in taxes. So it goes.
Villarreal have spent more than almost any club except for Madrid and Barca in this transfer season (€14m, which pales in comparison to the big two). Sevilla are actually third on the list, but of course have had some major transfers out in Negredo and Navas). Their main signing, Kevin Gamiero, came up lame on his first day of training and will miss their Europa League first leg qualification match.
That is, if Sevilla do indeed play it. Rayo Vallecano took their appeal against their Europa League exclusion to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and a ruling is due tomorrow. Someone is supposed to be heading to Montenegro to play Mladost Podgorica this Thursday. Yet more chaos.
And finally, let's note that our neighbors Castellón have taken a page from Mallorca's book. The albinegro had invited our B team to play them in a friendly (remember, Castellon competes against our C team in the Tercera) but have now withdrawn the invitation in light of negative comments from supporters.
Mallorca "fans" can at least call on their own interpretation of the facts surrounding their exclusion from the Europa League several years ago to justify their fulminations (in their view, anyway), but in the case of Castellón it appears they simply don't like us. I don't think anyone will lose much sleep over that.