The players go out to the field 15 minutes after the set time. Before, there was activation in the gym. Two people close the group, in an intense chat. They are Jon Pérez Bolo and Koba Koindredi, in an exercise that, before external eyes, seems aimed at clarifying what will happen on Sunday at Anxo Carro. Bolo is in charge of finding a path that leads Oviedo to a happier version, more offensive and, of course, more successful. Koba is a master piece in the coach’s plan. Against Oviedo’s tedious game in recent weeks, Koba’s talent.
The talk ends as soon as the group arrives at the stage scheduled for a “fut-tennis” tournament in yesterday’s relaxed open-door session at El Requexón. The test bench took place on Wednesday, in training without the public or media in the sports city. An intense clash against Vetusta that ended in a landslide for the elders. The best vitamin against drought that keeps the team without celebrating a goal in the last 254 minutes of the League.
And Koba enters that plan to achieve new spirits. The Frenchman is a different footballer, a free spirit. He plays with the ball while the teams are organized, he tries shots with Montoro as the improvised goalkeeper while the rest pick up his things. He stays at the end, along with Rama and Flores, rehearsing direct fouls. He has something of someone who enjoys football as a child’s game.
That mentality also carries some risks. As it happened in Santander, at its premiere. Nadal saved the victory in an action in which Koba had obviously lost his place. “It’s his desire to go ahead,” Bolo excused him. Or against Levante, when at the start of the action that the visitor draws, a throw-in into the area, the Frenchman gets confused and loses his mark. The midfielder will polish the defects as he adds minutes, they argue in the blue club. And Bolo seems ready to give it flight.
The technician was one of the main drivers of his hiring. Tito knew him from Valencia, he had seen him compete and train, and the reports and videos made Bolo smile. It was precisely what he was looking for to invigorate his midfield. That his confidence in his game is total was seen upon his arrival, with just a couple of training sessions, he introduced him to the field at the break of the clash in Santander. Since then he has only fallen from eleven last Saturday against Ibiza. “We wanted to have balance,” Bolo explained after the match, just before acknowledging that they had not managed to deactivate the rival.
Now, Koba points to eleven. He remains to see what his role is. He can act in the 4-4-2 as he has done so far, with license to join the attack and step on the rival field. If Bolo chooses to reinforce the spinal cord, with the entry of another pivot, the Frenchman could be rewarded with more freedom, with someone watching his back. In any case, he will be in the team.
And he will do it on a stage with crumb. Against Lugo, one of the teams that longed to have him last summer. The interest of the Galician team came from the hand of their coach, Hernán Pérez. The man from Oviedo holds the midfielder in high esteem for following Valencia Mestalla last season, when he directed the Real Madrid youth team. Lugo tried to close the loan of the midfielder, but the strong interest of Oviedo tilted the balance towards the blue.
César Gómez, doctor from Pachuca, present
Dressed in the club’s official tracksuit, as has happened in recent days, César Gómez, head of the Pachuca under-20 medical services, followed the developments of Bolo’s pupils on the pitch. It is another example of the synergies between the club’s largest shareholder, since Gómez has been in the city for a few days to lend a cable to the team. At the beginning of the session, he inquired about Marco Sangalli’s condition. The winger has some discomfort in his right leg and he did not participate with his teammates in the fut-tennis exercises, working on the sidelines together with the physical trainer Álvaro Cuello. David Costas stayed in the gym and Borja Sánchez is still on the injured list and is out for the next few weeks.
The club exceeds the members of last year
The social mass of support for Oviedo continues to grow week by week and yesterday the club published the latest subscriber data for the 2022/23 season. As published yesterday by the blue entity, there are already 18,439 members that Oviedo has. The figure is close to 20,000, although it is still insufficient to reach the figure set by the blue rectors as a goal for this season. Last year, with the team bordering on the play-off positions and various campaigns to add temporary subscribers in the final stretch, Oviedo reached 18,362 subscribers. The highest number since returning to professional football is still the 20,830 subscribers registered in the 2017/2018 season, with Anquela as coach.
