‘We said yesterday’, paraphrasing Fray Luis de León, that football and basketball presented two exciting and ambitious projects this year in the city. lots of investment, many new faces and a lot of quality but we had to see how that puzzle was taking shape. Málaga CF’s defeat on matchday one against Burgos with 7 debutant starters out of 11 has already opened up the first doubts. Coach Guede pulled from the manual at the end of the game “nothing came out of us”, more explicit was the midfielder Aleix Febas: “It will come in handy as a cure for humility.” The defeat, being painful, especially in terms of the illusionshouldn’t have much significance in the aspirations of the La Rosaleda team because the league is very long and there is a long space of time to correct this initial setback.
Unicaja doesn’t even have that time. Ibon Navarro’s team has played without a net since the first official match and should look at the neighbor so as not to repeat mistakes. Not winning one of the first two games of the season would be a huge blow. to the sports and economic forecasts of the team. A team with 9 new players out of 12, with few joint training sessions, with players all summer with their national teams, matches against affordable rivals for the potential typesetter and also playing at home… Danger, we have all the ingredients to fall into the abyss. They are games with no margin for error and of crucial importance for the team’s sporting future and you cannot fail.
Unicaja has started training 10 days before all its direct rivals, but 2 players have not yet appeared for Malaga because they were with their national teams and another two have been, but have already left. It is not putting on the bandage before having the injury, it is focusing on the importance of that preliminary phase of the BCL that should not be thought of as just another summer tournament. If the team is not well, it will have a very bad time.
The only advantage of starting so early and having this competitive “peak” at the end of September is that the team will present itself more well-rounded at the start of the ACB and could achieve important victories against direct or higher-level rivals. Baskonia, Gran Canaria and Real Madrid have changed their coach, present important changes in their squad and they will arrive much less rolled to days 1, 2 and 3 than the green ones. It can be a great opportunity. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be the opposite. The first month of competition will be crucial in the development of this new project.
PS 1. Folgueiras and Tanchyn this summer, Tamba, Carralero and Golden Dike the past, there are already many of the team’s outstanding youth players who pack their bags and go to the USA. This summer this exodus has also spread to the women’s team. It is not just a problem for Unicaja, but for Spanish basketball. All clubs are suffering from this talent drain for not having a competitive and educational solution for these age groups between the training and professional categories. Then there are cases like that of Juan Núñez at Real Madrid, who is expelled from Spanish basketball by first refusal rights if he wants to play quality minutes. It is one of the evils that Spanish and European basketball must tackle. The NBA lights go a long way but right now the danger is spreading to the NCAA and the High School and that is dramatic.
PS 2. I know it’s difficult because many times the distribution times are not set by the club but by the suppliers, but if the Christmas lottery can be bought in June, I don’t understand how the Unicaja shirt can’t be bought in the middle of August in the city These months, millions of tourists visit Malaga and the province who are potential buyers of the team shirt and can become ambassadors of the entity in the world. Sports shirts are increasingly a souvenir to take home. Malaga CF has seen the opportunity and has taken a slice. Unicaja should take note because I think thousands of t-shirts could be sold in the downtown store or in shopping centers at the AVE station or at the airport, and even more so considering how beautiful they are this year.