From: franherr@romeo.caltech.edu (Herrero, Francisco)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.soccer,soc.culture.spain
Subject: Spanish Soccer News 1/24
Date: 24 Jan 1993 19:21 PDT
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: romeo.caltech.edu
Keywords: Bye bye Futre
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

Hey Dudes!

Well, I just arrived back from an incredible weekend up in Mammoth Mountain,
where they had 20 feet of snow!!! This means, of course, that I did not have a
chance to listen to the soccer games this weekend, which means I don`t have any
highlights, but I DO have the results and most of the scorers. Instead of 
highlights, I'll write about some of the stuff that happened this week in
Spanish soccer, which isn't much, but oh well... Sorry about the incovenience.
Anyways, here are the scores and standings in First Division play this weekend:

_____________________________________________________________________________
Real Madrid			3	Tenerife			0
			Zamorano	
			Zamorano
			Zamorano
_____________________________________________________________________________
Real Sociedad			2	Barcelona			2
			Kodro (p)				Koeman (p)
			Kodro					Stoichkov
_____________________________________________________________________________
Osasuna				1	Burgos				0
			Aguila
_____________________________________________________________________________
Sevilla				1	Sporting de Gijon		0
			???????
_____________________________________________________________________________
Celta				1	Albacete			1
			Salillas				Pinilla
_____________________________________________________________________________
Rayo Vallecano			1	Deportivo de la Corun~a		1
			???????					???????
_____________________________________________________________________________
Oviedo				0	Valencia			1
								Penev (p)
_____________________________________________________________________________
Cadiz				2	Logron~es			2
			Quevedo					Kleber
			Arteaga					Amarildo
_____________________________________________________________________________
Espan~ol			2	Athletic de Bilbao		0
			Escaich   
			Lluis
_____________________________________________________________________________
Zaragoza			1	Atletico de Madrid		0
			Gay
_____________________________________________________________________________


STANDINGS:

TEAM			      POINTS
1. Dep. Corun~a			30
2. Barcelona			28	(one fewer game)
3. R. Madrid			27
4. Valencia			24
5. Sevilla			23
6. Tenerife			22
7. At. Madrid			21
8. Ath. Bilbao			21
9. Zaragoza			20
10. R. Vallecano		19
11. Espan~ol			19
12. Sp. Gijon			19
13. Osasuna			18
14. Celta			16	
15. Oviedo			14	(one fewer game)
16. Albacete			14
17. R. Sociedad			13
18. Cadiz			11
19. Logron~es			10
20. Burgos			 9

And these are the results and standings in second division play this weekend:

Valladolid - Palamos	  	2 - 1
Bilbao Ath. - Barcelona B	1 - 1
Lugo - Villareal		0 - 0
Mallorca - Merida		1 - 0
Sestao - Lleida			2 - 2
Compostela - Eibar		1 - 3
Badajoz - Betis			2 - 0
Castellon - Rac. Santander	0 - 0
Sabadell - Marbella		0 - 0
Figueras - R. Madrid B		1 - 2


STANDINGS:

TEAM			      POINTS
1. Mallorca			28
2. Lleida			27	(one fewer game)
3. Rac. Santander		27
4. R. Madrid B			24
5. Valladolid			22	(one fewer game)
6. Betis			21
7. Barcelona B 			21
8. Marbella			20
9. Castellon			19
10. Merida			19
11. Palamos			17
12. Badajoz			16	(one fewer game)
13. Figueras			16
14. Bilbao Ath.			15
15. Sestao			15
16. Villareal			15
17. Compostela			14	(one fewer game)
18. Sabadell			14
19. Eibar			14
20. Lugo			12


Deportivo de la Corun~a is the champion of the first half of the season, 
completed this weekend!! Yeah, yeah, Barcelona still has to play its game 
against Oviedo sometime in March, but it sounds really neat to call Deportivo 
the leaders right now. What they have done to date is totally unprecedented,
and my hat goes off to President Lendoiro for signing such great players this
year, coach Arsenio Iglesias for doing such a fantastic job of coaching them,
and to the players themselves, especially Bebeto, Silva, Aldana, Fran, and
Claudio, who have turned the standings upside down this year. If they can keep
this up and win the championship, nobody in Galicia is ever going to forget
the year Depor beat the giants Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Atletico de Madrid
in the standings at the end of the season to win the championship. Let`s hope
they can keep this up...

And then there is Jesus Gil's Atletico de Madrid, a team in a MAJOR crisis.
They are losing game after game since Christmas, and things are looking awful
for coach Luis Aragones. This week, their top player and one of the best
players in Spain, Futre, left Madrid vowing never to come back to the team, and
after rumors that he was going to Real Madrid (which would really piss off Gil),
signed for Benfica for the next four and a half seasons in Portugal (which by
the way set off a huge controversy in Lisbon between rivals Sporting Lisbon
and Benfica). Atleticco is currently in complete disarray. At least Schuster
finally made it back from injury.  They have a total disaster especially on
offense, where there is not a single player who can score. Futre used to do the
scoring, and that wasn`t enough. Manolo is shooting rarely at the goal this
season, and Luis Garcia looks completely lost on the field most of the time.
Aragones could be fired any day now... And to top it off, they get to play at
Tenerife next weekend, where the locals are unbeatable lately...

Tenerife ran into a whole bunch of trouble this week. There is a good reason
for the disaster in Madrid this weekend against Real Madrid. A VERY good reason:
their best player Fernando Redondo, hailed as the hottest thing out of Argentina
since some short fat guy with curly hair whose name escapes me :-) :-), was
taken out of the game last week with what seemed like a minor knee injury. It
turns out that he had arthroscopic surgery on the knee this week, and he will
not come back until late April or even May. This is a HUGE blow to Jorge 
Valdano's team. Their midfield has been left naked...

In the Real Madrid camp, there was nothing much going on this week. Chendo,
confined to rare appearances in games, has gotten so frustrated that he has
renounced his status as captain of the team. It seems that the pressure from
not playing, topped with the pressure from the more charismatic players in the
team (not to point any fingers, but I think the Quinta del Buitre gang have a
lot to do with this) finally got to him, and he doesn`t want to deal with the
captainship of the team anymore. Oh well...

Finally, last week, I reported that "Cadiz coach Ramon Blanco had been fired
and Jose Luis Romero had taken his place", but I was totally wrong. Romero has
been their coach this season, but after last week's debacle in Valencia, he
was fired and replaced by.... yes, you guessed it, Ramon Blanco. Sorry for the
confusion...

If some of you are wondering what the hell is going on with my standings,
especially in second division, I may have missed some make-up games this 
Wednesday, so some teams may have different places in the standings. In other
words, don't start FLAMING me because your team should have a couple of more
points. I'll get around to finding out about the make-up games soon enough, so
be patient with me.

This Wednesday coming up, Spain plays a friendly match in Las Palmas against
Mexico. Coach Javier Clemente is not taking things very seriously, so he is
going to try out a whole bunch of new players in this game, among which are
Julen Guerrero of Athletic de Bilbao (YESSSS!) and Christianssen of Barcelona's
B team. In case you wondered, Christianssen is half Spanish and half Danish,
so he is allowed to play for Spain as a national player despite his name, which
doesn't sound like it is from Barcelona or Madrid or Tomelloso for that matter.
Anyways, I have a feeling this is just an excuse for the Spanish and Mexican
teams to spend some days at the beach in the Canary Islands...

Later, Dudes.

Paco Herrero				| A Spaniard in a foreign land  |
franherr@romeo.caltech.edu		| Where is Tomelloso?		|
franherr@juliet.caltech.edu		| In La Mancha, of course.	|