With back-to-back European Championship triumphs and a World Cup to the national team’s name matched by Barcelona’s recent success and Real Madrid’s record-breaking response, Spanish is in the ascent.
It is a rise recognised globally and one that the Players’ Association (AFE) is looking to capitalise on in taking a group of clubless players on a tour of Asia this month. Indeed, for various reasons, a number of footballers are left each summer without a team when their contract expires.
Chinese giants Shanghai Shenhua currently have the likes of Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka on their books, but a team of free agents assembled by the AFE comfortably defeated them this week thanks to goals from Ruben Navarro and Isaac Jove.
Free agents Navarro and Jove, formerly of Valencia and Udinese respectively, are among a group of over 20 Spanish players travelling around the Asian country in search of a new club by playing friendlies against the locals. Others of note taking part include former Levante and Malaga full-back Manolo Gaspar, former Osasuna and Athletic Bilbao midfielder Inaki Munoz, former Valencia and Real Zaragoza midfielder Jorge Lopez [pictured].
In this the fifth edition of the scheme set up by the AFE, La Liga winner and former Spanish international goalkeeper Jose Francisco Molina has been marshalling the ‘homeless squad’ for their two-week long tour of China.
The objectives of the project are described by the AFE as ‘providing players without a team a unique opportunity’, to ‘increase motivation and self-esteem’, to ‘present an alternative to feelings of rejection’ and to ‘report the training and match programme to team managers nationally and internationally’.
The AFE selection this year includes former predominant La Liga regulars that have fallen on difficult times in trying to find new employment. Molina’s men have impressed in their three-game tour, sandwiching a draw with Guizhou Rehne between wins over Hangzhou Greentown and Shanghai. The former Valencia mainstay and subsequent Coach has made a point of using all the players at his disposal, for instance making eight changes at half-time against Greentown.
Whilst the two wins were seen as impressive, the draw with Guizhou Rehne proved most notable, with the Chinese Super League club listing former Levante trio Ruben Suarez, Rafa Jorda and Nano on their books. Whilst none have not directly benefited from the AFE’s scheme, they are the example of Spaniards settling abroad that the organisation hopes can be repeated this autumn.
It may not be as focus-pulling this month as Spain beginning the defence of their World Cup with qualification or the Under-21s’ imperious defeat of Croatia, but the AFE’s tour of China is as strong a statement of Spanish football working on an international scale in 2012.
