Villarreal news, August 1

Villarreal have arrived in Buenos Aires for their friendly against Boca Juniors, which will take place Tuesday night (Wednesday early AM Spanish time). Meanwhile, the dates and times for the second jornada have been released, and Villarreal is playing at Real Sociedad on Friday. That’s right, we close out the first weekend playing on a Monday, and then play again on Friday. Where’s the fairness in that?

BTW, Roberto Soldado was a last minute injury absence form the trip to Argentina too.

Other news from La Liga:

Valencia continue to unload players—Marcelino wants Orellana gone, and Alvaro Negredo is in Turkey to close a deal with Besiktas. (It was rumored that Besiktas might try to get Roberto Soldado if the Negredo deal didn’t happen).

Girona continue to add players courtesy of Manchester City. The latest is Aleix García, who has been loaned to Girona for the coming season.

Somehow I doubt that wneh Sr. Roig agreed to sell Aleix to Manchester, he expected them to loan him to another Primera side. Man City are actually playing a friendly in Girona on August 15—maybe they could just bring their loanees and drop them off then, would save travel money.

Malaga loanee Borja Bastón talks about struggles in Swansea. “In Spain the food and the weather are good...”. He didn’t think much of Bob Bradley, either.

And finally, some old stories that are finally reaching their end. You may recall Javier Tebas took over the reins of the league promising action—ACTION!—on match-fixing. The Zaragoza-Levante match (Zaragoza won 1-0) was widely suspected of being ‘irregular’, but now, over five years after the match took place, a judge has essentially closed the book on it, saying there is not enough evidence to prosecute anyone. Unless something changes in the next four days, the investigation is over.