Malaga owner Sheikh Abdullah Al-Thani has sent Moayad Shatat, one of his aides, to try to sort out the club’s financial problems.
Al-Thani and his Vice-President Abdullah Ghubn are still detained in Qatar on business and Shatat, an executive of the NAS group that belongs to Al-Thani, has now been handed the job of untangling Los Blanquiazules’ messy business affairs.
Shatat will stay in Malaga indefinitely until matters are resolved, reports La Opinion de Malaga, but firstly he will need to sort out money owed to both Villarreal and Osasuna for the transfers of Santi Cazorla and Ignacio Monreal, while some players and staff have still allegedly not been paid their salaries for June.
The unrest has also begun to manifest itself on the playing side, with stories in the English Press that Santi Cazorla wants to leave in the light of growing interest from Arsenal, who are reported to have bid €20m for the Spanish international, although Malaga have denied this.
Boss Manuel Pellegrini, meanwhile, has said on the club’s pre-season tour of Venezuela that to sell Cazorla for €20m would be like giving him away for nothing. “To sell him for €20m would be similar to giving someone a present and I don’t think the club are prepared to do, nor have any intention of doing, something like that,” the Chilean told a Press conference.
“If you receive a big offer for a player then you always have to look at it, yet I don’t think for that price Santi is going to leave because, as I say, it would be like giving him away.
“Even so, it is very important we solve our internal problems so we can get on with the job of playing football with the same hopes and aspirations we had last season,” he added.
