Saturday, March 01, 2014

MALLORCA TODAY - New coach, new disaster for Real Mallorca

Real Mallorca 1 : 2 Barcelona B
Even by Mallorca's standards, this has been a chaotic and embarrassing week, one that has made the club more of a laughing-stock than it has managed to aspire to be in the past. José Luis Oltra was sacked as coach, or was he? Such is the power struggle, pettiness, stupidity and fighting at board level that it wasn't clear what was happening, the appointment of Lluis Carreras as Oltra's successor initially being opposed by German shareholder Utz Claassen, who was in favour of ex-Mallorca, former Spain international and uncle of Rafa, Miguel Angel Nadal, taking over. Finally, Carreras was confirmed. A former Mallorca player himself, the job at Mallorca is his third coaching job. He had three seasons with Sabadell, getting them promoted to the Liga Adelante Second Division. So, Carreras's first game in charge at home to Barcelona's B, the team for which he made his professional debut in 1990 ...

And it couldn't have started more badly, Mallorca's goalkeeper Aouate being sent off after five minutes for deliberate handling outside the box. Barcelona B scored six minutes later and added a second after 20 minutes. Disaster became even greater disaster when Iriney was sent off two minutes before the break; Mallorca down to nine men. Despite being two players down and despite the calls for resignations (for the board) from the terraces, Mallorca did keep going, and Kevin pulled one back, albeit two minutes from the end. Too little, too late though. An awful result for Mallorca for whom automatic promotion is out of the question but for whom the play-offs are still not out of the question; and nor is relegation.

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