Thursday, August 2, 2012

Duopoly Safe

I met someone from Málaga this summer, and I congratulated him (audibly) on the upward trajectory of his hometown club and myself (silently) for finding a La Liga fan in the DC area. I was surprised to see that he wasn't feeling all that good, despite besting its best finish in the Liga table by four spots and earning a Champions League spot for the first time ever. Obviously, they were a long way from Real and Barça, etween Manuel Pelligrini, Santi Cazorla, Jérémy Toulalan, rumors of a Giovani Dos Santos signing, and, not least, the ownership of a fat cat from the Qatari royal family, but the evidence definitely argued for optimism.

Maybe he knew something I didn't, because this summer has been, to say the least, a bit disappointing. First, there was the lack of rumors of big-fish purchases, a la Cazorla last summer. But a run through the headlines from As any one of the last seven days or so, complete with lawsuits by players for nonpayment and stories about crises of liquidity and rumors that the sheik is on his way out, should make malagueños pine for the days in which a subpar transfer season was the worst of their worries. To wit:

The bottom right headline is particularly jarring.

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