European Football Weekly Round-Up By Zach Lowy

The fifth matchday of the 2022/23 La Liga season saw plenty of excitement and late drama throughout Spain’s top-flight: Mallorca and Girona ground out a 1-1 draw, with the hosts going up in the 87th minute from centre-back Antonio José Raíllo Arenas, only for Girona to equalize from the penalty spot in the 92nd minute via ex Leeds man Samu Sáiz to secure a point in the Balearic Islands. Real Madrid found themselves ahead early on as Vinícius Júnior opened the scoring after 9 minutes only for ex-Blanco Sergio Canales to equalize shortly after, with Federico Valverde coming on for Eduardo Camavinga in the 63rd minute and within two minutes, sneaking past Guido Rodríguez to receive a pass from Dani Carvajal, taking a touch before sending a cross to Rodrygo who managed to beat Real Betis goalkeeper Rui Silva from close range as Los Blancos secured a 2-1 win at the Bernabéu. Carlo Ancelotti’s side are the only La Liga team who have won each of their first four fixtures and sit two points above Barcelona and Villarreal and three points above Real Betis and Osasuna as they look to successfully defend their crown for the first time since the 2007/08 season. Osasuna attempted to bounce back from a 1-0 defeat at Betis with the hosts going ahead via Aimar Oroz after the break, only for summer arrival Florian Lejeune to equalize for Rayo Vallecano with a quarter-hour left in regular time. Six minutes later, Jagoba Arrasate would make a quadruple change with Radamel Falcao, Pablo Ibáñez, Kike García and Abde Ezzalzouli coming on, the latter arriving on loan from Barcelona on deadline day and quickly making an impact, receiving a throw-in and driving forward into the edge of the box before zipping past several Rayo players, finding an inch of space before firing a cross towards Rubén García, who would slot home in the 90th minute to secure a 2-1 victory for Osasuna in El Sadar.

Sevilla’s Worst Start In Their History

Born in Morocco, Ezzalzouli moved to Spain with his family at seven years old and played for various clubs around the city of Elche before joining Hércules B in the neighbouring city of Alicante, where he would play until joining Barcelona B on August 31, 2021, making his La Liga debut two months later in a 1-1 draw vs. Deportivo Alavés and becoming the first Moroccan-born player to play for Barça’s first team. Abde would score his first goal on December 12 in a 2-2 draw against Osasuna, with the 20-year-old winger making 10 appearances in the top-flight before eventually being relegated to the bench in February and later sent back to Barça B, before renewing his contract until 2026 and heading out to Osasuna on a season-long loan and returning to the stadium where he scored his first, and so far, his only goal in Spain’s top-flight. His loan departure was precipitated by two blockbuster attacking signings for the Blaugranas in Brazilian winger Raphinha from Leeds United and Polish striker Robert Lewandowski from Bayern Munich, both of whom scored within 36 minutes with Eric García securing a 3-0 victory at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán and adding to Julen Lopetegui’s misery at Sevilla, who, after collecting one point from their first four matches against Osasuna, Real Valladolid, Almería and Barcelona, have suffered the worst start to a La Liga season in club history. They have scored three and conceded eight, and they find themselves level on one point with Real Valladolid, Elche, and Getafe, and one point above Cádiz. Next up? A visit from Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.

Atletico’s 1-1 Draw Against Sociedad

Whilst Real Madrid will travel to Hampden Park and take on Ange Postecoglou’s Celtic, Barcelona will host Viktoria Plzen and Atlético Madrid will host Porto. After beginning the season with a 3-0 victory at Getafe, Diego Simeone’s side have suffered a 2-0 defeat at home to Unai Emery’s Villarreal, beaten Valencia 1-0 at home with a goal from Antoine Griezmann, before facing off against Real Sociedad at Anoeta and opening the scoring via Álvaro Morata in the fifth minute from a corner kick, going into the break with a narrow lead and prompting Imanol Alguacil to sub off Alexander Sørloth for Umar Sadiq at halftime, whilst Simeone changed Saúl Ñíguez for Geoffrey Kondogbia following the Spaniard’s booking. Sadiq had arrived on deadline day from Almería for €20 million with the Nigerian forward brought in as an Alexander Isak replacement following the Swede’s departure to Newcastle and making a quick start to life in La Real, as fellow summer recruit Mohamed-Ali Cho wriggled past José María Giménez before firing a cross into the far post where Sadiq would convert from close range, beating Reinildo Mandava to the ball and powering a header into the back of the net to secure a 1-1 draw at Anoeta.

Braithwaite Scores Winning Goal On Debut

Within hours of terminating his contract as an FC Barcelona player and putting an end to his 2.5-year spell at the Camp Nou, Martin Braithwaite joined Barcelona’s local rivals Espanyol and signed a three-year contract with the Blanquiazules, with the Danish striker arriving on a free transfer on deadline day and grabbing a start at San Mamés against Ernesto Valverde’s Athletic Club, who had kept clean sheets in each of their first three fixtures and who had won their last two, and capping off his debut with the winning goal in the 83rd minute to secure a 1-0 victory and end Athletic’s indomitable start under their new manager. Sunday’s following two fixtures were decidedly more lopsided with Villarreal coming out victorious 4-0 at home against Elche whilst Valencia thrashed Getafe 5-1 at home, with the weekend’s action coming to an end on Monday as Real Valladolid host Almería.

Iago Aspas & Intermedia Sport Player

The weekend’s action began at Balaídos, where Celta de Vigo found themselves on level pegging against visitors Cádiz going into the interval, prompting Celta manager Eduardo Coudet to make a double substitution: Jørgen Strand Larsen came on for Carles Pérez, whilst Gabri Veiga came on for Renato Tapia. Veiga would find Iago Aspas with a pass outside the centre circle with the captain trotting forward and launching a shot from outside the box past Jeremias Ledesma to open the scoring after 55 minutes, whilst seven minutes later, Celta would cap off an intricate passing combination with Larsen flicking it with his backheel into the path of Óscar Rodríguez who doubled their lead, Aspas later tripling the lead with another rocket from outside the box. 

Aspas currently sits level with 34-year-old Robert Lewandowski in the league’s scoring charts with 5 goals, one ahead of Real Betis’ Borja Iglesias and two ahead of Sadiq, Morata, Vinícius and 34-year-old Karim Benzema. Like Benzema and Lewandowski, Aspas has continued to improve with age like a fine wine, the 35-year-old currently sitting atop the Celta Vigo all-time scoring charts with 189 goals – 119 above second-placed Vladimir Gudelj and Aleksandr Mostovoy – whilst his 422 appearances is bettered only by teammate Hugo Mallo with 425. He is the captain, the soul, and the engine of this Celta Vigo side, and he is also the former client of Intermedia Sport Player, a small agency in Vigo that featured Aspas, midfielder Denis Suárez, as well as various Celta academy graduates like Veiga and Miguel Rodríguez as its clients, enjoying a comfortable relationship with the Celestes until May 2021, when Bryan Bugarin, a 12-year-old who was top scorer and official MVP at the prestigious youth competition La Liga Promises Torneo, left Celta Vigo for Real Madrid shortly after the tournament ended. His agency? Intermedia Sport Player.

Denis Suárez’s Return To Celta Vigo

The departure of one of Celta’s finest academy graduates for Los Blancos didn’t sit too well with Celta president Carlos Mouriño, who stated to a group of parents of youth players, “It is shameful that boys of 12 years old are being sold off to the highest bidder. Players represented by this agency are not going to play for Celta. We have to stop this profiteering with our children.”

In the final days of July 2021, Mouriño made an ultimatum to Intermedia’s clients: either leave the agency or leave Celta. Iago, whose brother Jonathan worked at the agency, chose to leave Intermedia and head to a new company mounted by Jonathan, Carlos Rodríguez, Pablo Couñago and Mateo Míguez, whilst other clients quickly abandoned ship and fell in line, all but one: Denis Suárez.

Born in Salceda de Caselas, Galicia, Denis spent time at local side Porriño Industrial before moving to Celta’s academy in 2009 at the age of 15, rejecting interest from Real Madrid to join the club that he had grown up supporting, only to leave for Manchester City in 2011 for an initial fee of £900,000 when Celta found themselves in need of quick cash to pay outstanding salaries in the first-team squad. Denis was voted as Manchester City’s Young Player of the Year in his debut campaign in England and spent two years at the Etihad before returning to Spain and moving to FC Barcelona, playing for Barça B throughout the 2013/14 season before being loaned to Sevilla in July 2015 as part of the deal to send Ivan Rakitić to Barcelona and scoring 6 goals and 5 assists in 46 appearances for the Andalusian side who would finish fifth under Unai Emery and win a second straight Europa League title. Denis would head to Villarreal the following year, racking up 5 goals and 12 assists in 48 appearances before returning to Barcelona in 2016 after the Blaugranas exercised their buyback option of €3.5 million. Denis would make a total of 12 La Liga starts and 3 goals and 5 assists in 36 appearances in Luis Enrique’s final season at the club, before grabbing 3 goals and 5 assists in 27 appearances the following season under Ernesto Valverde, picking up a domestic double along the way. However, after missing the start of the 2018/19 season with a muscle injury and racking up just two brief cameos before heading to Arsenal on loan in the January window and reuniting with Emery. Denis never quite managed to get going in North London with just six appearances – all coming off the bench – before the Spaniard suffered a groin injury in April that ended his campaign, a loan experience only rivalled by Kim Kallstrom’s ill-fated stay at the Emirates in 2014. Rather than vying it out for a place at his parent club, Denis chose to leave Barcelona and return to his boyhood club, joining Celta Vigo for a club-record fee of €16 million and becoming the club’s highest-paid player. As part of Operación Retorno, Celta focused on signing ex-Celta players who had taken a misstep and who were in need of a place with less spotlight to relaunch their careers such as Denis, Nolito, Pape Cheikh Diop, Santi Mina, and Rafinha.

After barely surviving relegation last season, Celta Vigo have made “Operación Retorno,” or “Operation Return” the main project of their summer.

In other words, they’ve focused on recruiting ex-Celta players who’ve struggled in their career development since leaving the club.

— Zach Lowy (@ZachLowy) August 13, 2019

Denis struggled to live up to expectations in 2019/20 with 1 goal and 5 assists in 29 appearances, and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, he agreed to renew his contract and help the club balance the books following a season that would see Denis miss the last five matches with a hamstring injury as Celta avoided relegation on the final day of the campaign. Despite guiding the club to safety, Óscar García would receive the sack on November 9, 2020, after one win in Celta’s nine, with Argentine manager Eduardo Coudet taking over and unlocking Denis’ finest attributes and making him the creative fulcrum of his system, with the attacking midfielder registering 9 assists in 35 appearances as Celta finished 8th in the table.

Denis’ Fued With The Club President

Despite receiving an ultimatum from the club president, Denis chose to remain at Intermedia, which he also holds a small stake in, whilst Coudet chose to continue picking him in the starting line-up and stay out of an ongoing war of words between Denis and Mouriño. “Denis has put his own interests ahead of those of the club,” said Mourino in January. “If he stays with this agent, he cannot renew his contract and it will be very difficult for him to play here. The best thing is for him to find a new club.” Six months after Mouriño’s edict to Celta’s Intermedia clientele, only Denis remained at Balaídos, with the 28-year-old registering 4 goals and 6 assists in 40 appearances and remaining as vital as ever to Coudet’s tactical setup. Even Bugarín, whose departure to Real Madrid had caused the entire debacle, had left Intermedia and joined Wasserman, an international firm, but Denis has stayed put.

After opening the scoring in the ninth minute to secure a 1-0 win against Elche at Balaídos, Denis celebrated by kissing the badge and later tweeted a not-so-thinly-veiled dig at Mouriño following the penultimate match of the campaign: “Celtismo is above any person. Thank you for this season. It has been a pleasure. Celta forever.” Two months later, he would tweet a lengthy thread on July 28, stating:

 “Hello! Today the president has given a press conference about my situation and, since you are always there supporting me, I want to clarify some of his false statements. Several months have passed since he threatened me that: “I’m going to make sure that the Balaídos faithful whistles you.” It’s time to respond. Regarding the ‘incident’, the president says: “A club that pays a player millions of euros and that sells one of our players, from the academy, to earn 40,000 or 50,000 euros, really, it does seem like a betrayal to me to the club.” I clarify this in three points: firstly, I have the contract that Celta offered me and I have fulfilled it with the love I have had for this club since I was a child. A contract, by the way, whose confidentiality I actually respect. Secondly, I have never sold a player from Celta or from any other team. I invite you to prove this statement with the relevant documents, as well as the income of the money you are talking about. Thirdly, beyond this, it is Celta the club who has recognized that everything is false. You have to know our agreement as the internal regulations give very serious sanctions (including termination without compensation) for players who act against the interests of the club, but Celta has not only never imposed any sanction on me but has not even started any kind of investigation against me for that reason. Who is lying then? The president says about my options to leave: “We have given him four offers sought by us (…) one paid him 12 million euros net in three years. I clarify: I never received such an offer from Celta. I invite you again to publicly show the document of that offer and my refusal… There is none. He says: “Another team that was playing the Champions League and was swapping players asked for an awful lot of money…I clarify: I will not say the name of the club out of respect, but the money problem was not on my part but on this team that had to sell due to a salary limit issue. They couldn’t undertake any operation, no matter how cheap. To close the topic of offers, of the other two that the president cites: I brought one of them and there was no agreement on either side and I have no record of the other. On training: “At no time is he away from the team. He does more than 75%, exactly the same as everyone else.” I clarify: It is a subject that I cannot say more about being in Labor Inspection, but the words of the president and the images speak for themselves. Finally, he says: “We want to clarify that his only purpose is to harm Celta.” “He wants to leave on a free to earn even more money.” I clarify: You have heard me offer solutions without any agency involved to the club to fix everything and be able to fulfil my dream, which is none other than to wear the Celta shirt. It still is Celta forever.”

One month later, Denis tweeted his appreciation at the fans who attended Celta’s training session: “I wish you were at the Ciudad Deportiva every day, when you come to see us it is the only day that they let me train with the team all the time…what a coincidence.” Denis, who renewed his contract during the pandemic in order to stretch his salary over a longer time span and help the club deal with the economic effects of the stoppage of football, has refused to blink and has remained put at Balaídos past the closure of the summer transfer window despite the 79-year-old president’s desperate attempts to offload him from the squad. He has not made a single appearance in the matchday squad for any of Celta’s first four fixtures, and whilst he remains contracted until 2024, his hopes of playing for his boyhood club again are quickly fading away.