The Provincial Court of Almería sentenced Santi Mina, then Celta player, to four years in prison and a compensation of 50,000 euros for a crime of sexual abuse of a young woman, which occurred in June 2017 in the Almeria town of Mojácar. After that sentence, the Galician footballer was separated from the club until mid-July, when a court order forced Celta to readmit him to their facilities and be one of the squad’s extra players. They were two months of professional solitude in which he used the facilities of the Metropolitan Vigo, the most complete gym in the city of Vigo, to stay in the best possible shape. There he went to train with a cap, with the aim of going unnoticed, until a client noticed his presence and asked the gym not to admit him into their center. So it was.
Today, fourteen months later, the present and short-term future of Santi Mina is not much better than in the spring of last year. On July 19, the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia dismissed the footballer’s appeal and confirmed his conviction, thus exhausting the first of the two instances to which the footballer can appeal. He only has an appeal before the Supreme Court before the sentence is final and must go to jailif he does not do it before, something that seems unlikely despite the double request of Iván Bolaño, the victim’s lawyer.
“He’s not going to run away”
«The player continues looking for work outside the country to have a reason to leave Spain, which exponentially increases the risk of flight and failure to comply with the sentence,” the lawyer indicated to the TSJA in a letter sent last week in which he requested his urgent admission to prison, something he already did for the same reasons at the beginning of August. Neither one nor the other has yet been resolved by the court, but his adventure in Arabia last season is the defense used by Mina’s legal team to deny that Santi is looking to flee the country. «He has always been at the disposal of Justice. In fact, when he was playing in Riyadh and they called him to testify, he declined to do so electronically and appeared in Spain to do so in person,” explains his lawyer. «And so he will always remain. Santi is not going to go anywhere to escape from anything. And until the sentence is final, which remains to be seen, he is legitimized to play anywhere in the world,” adds Fátima Rodríguez.
After the confirmation of his sentence by the TSJA, Celta terminated his contract, which had one more year remaining and his assignment in Al-Shabab was not prolonged either. Vicente Moreno’s goodbye did not help him. Last summer, the now Almería coach went to Mina’s own house on the outskirts of the city to make him see that it was a good opportunity. Al-Shabab was Celta’s rival in the 2022 edition of the Quinocho Trophy and Moreno took advantage of the situation to convince the player. The departure of the Valencian coach, once the season was over, and Santi’s poor football performance in the Arab team were two compelling reasons for not continuing in Riyadh.
Sampdoria’s no
Without a team since then, and as a free agent, the option of Sampdoria appeared, but the strong pressure of typhosi He aborted his signing and it does not seem easy that he will have many more opportunities, taking into account his current criminal situation. It is very difficult for a sentence like this to go from four years in prison to innocent and what happened with Sampdoria creates a precedent for any other team that thinks of him as a reinforcement: “If you ask how he is coping, they will tell you that he is coping well, but the The reality is that he is annoyed,” says a person close to him, who is almost impossible to access, by order of the player himself.
Santi Mina has created a bunker around. He does not want to know anything about the media or former teammates and has taken refuge in his immediate family and his true friends, such as Rubén Blanco, the former Celta goalkeeper and current Olympique de Marseille goalkeeper. Everyone is prohibited from speaking a single word about him or saying what he does and what he doesn’t do: “He is totally aware of his delicate situation, but he doesn’t think much beyond the day-to-day. And, at the moment, he ‘presumes’ that he goes out to the street to walk his dog without anyone telling him anything,” says this same person.
He does it with the hope of finding a team where he can continue playing football, waiting for the Supreme Court to say the last word. Russia, Mexico, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates are the destinations where he could wear shorts again, but for now, professionally and personally, Santi Mina is in a dead end.
2023-09-15 04:22:37
#dead #Santi #Mina
