A few weeks ago, Real Mallorca started their season with a creditable 1-1 draw with Real Madrid. At the time, I wrote, “There’s always a sense of excitement and nervousness when a new football season starts. How will your team play, where will they finish the season, and will they win a trophy? These are three of the most important questions in most fans minds.” Now having been a Mallorca fan for many years, my expectations, to be honest, weren’t that high. Last season we finished 15th in the league, but we had made the Copa del Rey final, losing on penalties to Atlético Bilbao. More importantly, we had replaced our very cautious and defensive coach Javier Aguirre with a fairly unknown one in Jagoba Arrasate. He was in charge at Osasuna for six years, and they had become a solid mid-table team and two years ago finished in 7th place. What Arrasate was known for was encouraging youth team players to push for first team places, and he wasn’t afraid to throw them in.
After the Madrid game, things got a little worse for Mallorca, an encouraging away win at Leganés was followed by two losses and a draw. So after 5 games they had 5 points.
At that time of the Madrid game I had commented on how well the American owners had done in improving the stadium, its facilities and the atmosphere. I was hoping that all that hard work would also transfer onto the pitch. But it wasn’t happening. It looked like Arrasate was searching for his best 11 as he was constantly changing the team, even the goalkeepers. What he was doing though was giving the youngsters a chance. Marc Domenech who 2 years ago was playing with my son Jacob at San Francisco in Palma, was one of the first and encouragingly more are now coming through. Whilst this was all welcome, points on the board were what Mallorca was missing, and it was looking like it was going to be another relegation battle. However, in the space of three games, they have all of a sudden woken up. A battling 1-0 home win against Real Sociedad has been followed by what can only be described as two amazing 1-2 away wins against Real Betis and Valladolid. Bearing in mind that they only won two away games in the whole of last season, and already they have three this season. As they had played Valladolid on the Friday night it meant that for at least 24 hours they were lying in a Champions League place, with Atlético Madrid, Real Madrid and Barcelona above them. That did change over the weekend, and now they lie in sixth place. Today they play another away game at Espanyol, so let’s hope they can continue this run of good form. It’s a great start and has the fans dreaming of Europe next season but let’s not get too excited we are only 8 games into a 38 game season.
Dad Taxi Mallorca 