Athletic Club seem to have come out of a turbulent summer in tact as they sit in the European places, managed by Ernesto Valverde.
The elections in June this year though could well have caused issues. Marcelino Garcia Toral’s contract expired with no President for him to commit his future to. They are also still without a Sporting Director.
As the central topic of Spanish football this week, the new Sports Law was naturally a point of discussion for new President Jon Uriarte at the Athletic General Assembly. Controversially, Athletic have joined Barcelona and Real Madrid in opposing the CVC deal. Diario AS covered his words on the topic.
“Athletic does not support Real Madrid or Barcelona, we are defending our interests and those of its partners. It is about the agreement that came with CVC and about the centralised management of commercial assets”.
“But this is not about the Superliga, it is about the management of LaLiga’s economic activities.”
Signing the CVC deal would prevent Real Madrid and Barcelona from forming a Superleague.
Uriarte went on to lay out the route forward for Athletic in the coming months and years. He compared their arrival at the club to getting on a moving train without knowing where the accelerator or the driver were.
Los Leones are forming a long-term and a short-term plan for his mandate, which Uriarte declared would be ready for the start of December. At that point, they will also appoint a Sporting Director.
Recently it had been announced that over the last three seasons, Athletic have been losing between €30m and €40m each year. Correcting the finances without weakening the side through sales will likely be near the beginning of those plans.
If a club like Barca could disappoint an established club legend and its most decorated goal machine, no one would be surprised at the negative turn of results in the aftermath of the Messi’s era. One cannot eat up one’s cake and still have it. At the momdnt, many important players with champions league experience are not in their best form while the majority young ones are just growing, having deficits in skilled areas. They lack maturity, understanding, coordination and definite modern tactical play styles that translate into consistent winning. Rather, the players struggled in the top with difficulty to score. That’s not typical to Barca we knew. The Catalan giant dipped too much monies into the past transfer market, but sadly recorded low with less to write home about.