After a week when a sign on the London Underground read “Passenger Update – There remains a serious points failure in the Tottenham area” ! – Real Mallorca are locked in a tense fight for survival in La Liga. They enter the final stretch of the season mired in the bottom three with just nine games left to play. Five of these fixtures are at home and it’s there where Mallorca must win enough points to keep them in La Primera. Four of these games are against Rayo, Valencia, Villareal and Oviedo, all of which could and should be winnable.
On Monday morning the Mallorca squad returned to training after a frustrating 2-1 defeat against Elche. There’s been an exodus of international players leaving to compete for their respective countries over the next 10 days or so. Samu Costa deservedly returned to the Portuguese national squad after 18 months for two friendlies against the USA in Atlanta and Mexico (now coached by Mallorca boss Javier Aguirre). Mojica remains Colombia’s first choice left back for friendlies against Croatia and France, and Jan Virgili was called up to the Spanish Under 21 squad for the European Championship qualifiers against Cyprus and Kosovo.
The biggest seismic battle involving Real Mallorca players happened last night in Bratislava where Martin Valjent’s Slovakia and Vedat Muriqi’s Kosovo played in a semifinal play-off for a place in this Summer’s World Cup (which would be a debut for Kosovo). The winner will face either Turkey or Romania in another qualifier next week.
Rarely has a game of football involving Real Mallorca left such a feeling of shock as the one us Mallorquinistas witnessed in Elche last Saturday. It wasn’t so much that we lost (badly), but rather how we crumbled so easily after going ahead. The team is too fragile, collapsing at the slightest setback, becoming an easy target for opponents who smell blood and go for Mallorca’s jugular!
Two glaring individual errors in defence, as well as the two very near-misses at goal, saw our undoing as we head towards the dreaded “drop” area. The defeat has left the team and the fans reeling and at present we seem to have no solutions. Only two of our players, Pablo Torre and the electric and audacious Zito Luvumbo, passed muster at Elche and the latter was the only player who caused havoc in the home defence.
Unbelievably coach Martin Demichelis took these two off in the second half and the players taking their places, Morlanes and Darder, were simply not good enough. Defensive errors have been Mallorca’s undoing all season and we’ve only kept three clean sheets, conceding 47 goals. The last one was 14 games ago against Oviedo (0-0) on December 5.
Before the game, Mallorca were level in points with Alaves who had a daunting trip to Celta Vigo. The home side looked to be well on top and were three up without reply in the 37th minute. Then came the mother of all comebacks as Alaves scored four times to win 3-4 to jump three points above us.
Another player whose future is up in the air is our iconic club captain Antonio Raillo. A local website reported that the 34-year-old Cordoban centre half, despite having a contract until 2027, was moving on – or retiring ? – in the Summer. He’s the fourth player to play the most games for the club and in a couple of weeks he’ll reach 300 appearances.
Raillo has had a terrible time with injuries this season, including a broken cheekbone. He and Abdon Prats are the only two players still at the club who played for Mallorca in Segunda B (third division) back in 2016. If he does leave, Raillo will go down as one of the greatest defenders to ever pull on a Mallorca jersey.
Our game against Real Madrid on Easter Saturday, kick off 4:15, is one of the key games on the calendar for football fans on the island. Real Mallorca season ticket holders have their seats guaranteed for the match but Real Madrid fans or football fans in general are scouring the options left to watch the game. General admission tickets are sold out on the Real Mallorca website (pending release of seats by season ticket holders) and the only other seats available are premium costing 850 euros. These are seats in the Presidential Lounge which offer “a perfect view of the pitch” and include top notch food.
All the other hospitality areas are sold out with eye-watering prices ranging between 850 to 1,300 euros. If you’re feeling particularly flush, you can enjoy the “Tunnel experience,” where you can watch the players in the tunnel before the game through a transparent window, then have a seat next to the home team bench, or next to Real Madrid’s bench. Both these options include a meet and greet with the Mallorca players, all for a cool 1,400 euros !
AND FINALLY, some football fans reading this may remember one of the hardest players in England in the 1990s, a guy called Julian Dicks. He was iconic at West Ham United where he was given the nickname “The Terminator” because of his “take no prisoners” tough tackling. Now on the backroom staff at Burnley, he was the subject of one of the commentating faux pas of the decade when a Metro Radio presenter said “Julian Dicks is everywhere, it’s like they’ve got 11 Dicks on the pitch !!”