Reus throw the principle behind LaLiga into disarray
Elche
For some time now, LaLiga has supposedly been run stringently, under the unyielding hand of Javier Tebas and his big financial controller, Javier Gómez. A model that is so strict and severe that, to cite the best example, sent Elche, a stately city, to the catacombs. There will have been reasons for it, sure enough. The Authorities confirmed the objections of LaLiga and Elche are currently languishing in Segunda, pining for those good old times with a front line of Cardona, Lezcano, Eulogio, Romero and Oviedo - the CLERO. After that came Ballester, Canós, Lico, Llompart, Asensi, Vavá, Marcial… that Elche.
Reus
But I won’t go on. Undoubtedly Elche’s current plight is down to the bad practices of the people who took them there, but the contrast between how LaLiga treated the club and the way in which Reus have slipped through the cat flap still jars, and even constitutes a model of general disrepute. Some of their players have not been paid and have had enough and left, while others, who have been paid, paddle upstream against the AFE - which encourages them to get out of the boat - and are led by the firmness of their coach, who guided them to a handsome win over Málaga recently.
The future
I’m not sure how far Reus will go. Technicalities state that if there are at least twelve professional signings then they must continue, and that’s where we currently stand. Yet something has happened that belongs to another time. The ‘alma mater’ of Reus is Joan Oliver, an opportunist from the years in which Convergence was everything in Catalonia. He was director of the TV channel TV3, Laporta’s right-hand man (and enemy spy) and now an opportunist with no future at the helm of a club which only Tebas will know why it has been granted certain things while other clubs haven’t. The result is one of general embarrassment, a kind of agony we are going to endure week after week, until the whole affair no longer washes.