Welcome, Samu Castillejo!

Samuel Castillejo joined Villarreal yesterday.  He's a player who scored 16 goals for Malaga's B side in 2013-14 and was called up to the first team last year, where he started the season on the bench but ended up playing 2200 minutes, scoring one goal and assisting on five more.  His favored foot is left, but he can play anywhere--left wing, right wing, even attacking midfielder.  Diego Simeone loves him because of his work ethic and his tireless commitment.

Word is we paid around €10m for him and slapped a €30m release clause on him.  If he continues his quick progress, that might need to be renegotiated in a year or two.  Castillejo, only 20, received his first caps for the under-21 national team earlier this year.

Also impressive was how quickly he went on twitter and thanked Malaga fans for their support and indicated he was eager to begin his next adventure in Vila-real, saying  "I feel really grateful to Villarreal for this great opportunity that they have given me and I hope I can make the most of it.  This is a great club that counts on youngsters and I want to repay that confidence."

Although reports are we paid €16m for both, I've also seen Malaga hardly owned any of Samu Garcia's rights and just under half of Castillejo's, so the net profit to them will only be in the €5-6m range.

And for you gamers out there, Futhead shows Castillejo has the same distribution (sort of a player profile) as Krohn-Delhi (player we were interested in, but much older; went to Sevilla) and Oliver Torres, whom we know and would have loved to keep on loan from Atleti last time.

Here is a video showing him in action last year for Malaga: I have no idea what the Greek subtitles mean!