On Friday night to Saturday, while some radicals were engaged in graffiti threatening the staff at the RCDE Stadium and the Sports City Dani Jarque, the club’s top management desperately approved the umpteenth change of direction to try to avoid the descent. The day before receiving a Real Madrid that will be leader alone if it wins a party (22 h, M. LaLiga) that can leave virtually descended the Espanyol, the white-and-blue organization announced the dismissal of Abelardo Fernandez and the transition from Rufete to interim coach. “We are looking for a last reaction so as not to lower our arms and be able to move forward. It’s a more emotional decision than a non-sporting one. We have to try to move forward with a little testosterone and unity “, sources from the club explained to ARA.
“It’s a very complicated situation and we have to face it. If I have to take a step forward, I do. I trust the players, I am convinced of the chances they have of doing good things as a solid, supportive and confident team. We have to face it to the end “, explained Rufete in a press conference after directing his first training session. The Alicante native made it clear that as long as there is hope, we will have to fight.
In the same year, Rufete will have been the director of professional football, the club’s top sports manager and coach, because he will lead the team for the last seven days of the league. It will be his second stage as coach after, in mid-2018, he also urgently replaced Toni Amor at the head of UD Ibiza. When Atlético Levante deprived them of promotion to Second B on penalties, Espanyol incorporated it into their sports area.
Sources from the Spanish-speaking organization consider that Abelardo “could not carry out the project due to the sensations that he and the team have transmitted”. The decision, taken by the board of directors in consensus with Rufete, took the Asturian by surprise, with whom just a week ago talks had resumed, which began in March, to renew his contract. The coach preferred to wait to know the outcome of the course, but the defeats against Levante and Betis have ended up breaking everything. In the farewell letter, the Asturian made no reference to a staff that he publicly criticized last week. Neither player said goodbye through social media.
Abelardo leaves Espanyol having added 14 points in 13 days, more than his two predecessors together. David Gallego and Pablo Machín added five each. Despite recent defeats with Levante and Betis, their points average (1.07 per game) would have prevented the relegation if they had taken the team from the start. Gallego (0.62) and Machín (0.5) did not reach the point per game. None of them, of course, was able to have the winter reinforcements that Abelardo has had. Chen Yansheng’s Espanyol has become a coach crusher. Rufete is seventh from Sergio González. But the most worrying fact is that the one who fit in perfectly with the idea and idiosyncrasy of the club, Rubi, is the only one of them who left by his own decision, disenchanted with the project.
Rufete i Durán will renew the squad
The current season is a pile of nonsense that goes from offices to the lawn and has not been corrected in time. There are many people responsible for Espanyol’s nightmare. Some have already been laid off and others will undergo the remodeling that will be promoted at the end of the school year by Rufete and José María Durán Farré, the two figures on whom the sports project has been pivoting since January. The presence of Alicante on the bench will also serve to examine first hand the commitment of the players in the locker room. “There is a percentage that I do not know and that I will know, and vice versa,” confirmed Rufete. He and Durán will restructure a squad that, in August, was defined by vice-president Carlos García Pont as “one of the best in the club’s history”. The reality is that, despite being the most expensive it has ever had (83 million), it is one of the most disappointing.
This is the second time in history that Espanyol has had four coaches in the same season. The only precedent so far was more than three decades ago, the 1988-89 academic year. Javier Clemente, who had led the team to their first UEFA final months ago, lasted 27 games. Former player Josep Mauri led five. Raúl Longhi played only one game before José María García de Andoin took over until the end of the season. None of them could avoid the third descent in the history of Espanyol. Rufete is the last bullet to work the miracle.
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