Spanish Football: Is Malaga loss beginning of the end?

 

After a 5-1 hammering at Valencia on Saturday night, Malaga's hopes of a top-four finish are over and, more worryingly, the future of the club is now up in the air. Ben Lyttleton reflects on a difficult end to the season for Pellegrini's men.

 

The Champions League dream was over for Malaga after a dramatic late twist in their quarter-final loss to Borussia Dortmund: and though they are appealing Uefa's ban from European competition next season, it looks like qualification next season will be beyond them too after a catastrophic 5-1 defeat at Valencia on Saturday night.

 

If the Dortmund loss was the end of their European adventure for the foreseeable future, this defeat could also have wide-ranging repercussions. It came against the backdrop of players and coaching staff not being paid, and the agent of Manuel Pellegrini touting the Chilean coach to Chelsea and Manchester City: although Pellegrini talked down the inevitable speculation, he did say he was committed to Malaga if the owners were still committed too.

 

And that's the problem with the club: Sheik Abdullah Al-Thani, the owner who claimed Malaga's Dortmund loss was because of "racism, pure and simple", has run the club into severe debt and there is no sign of more investment. While the Champions League was still a possibility, the players got on with things, but now they are out, the situation is unravelling, and fast.

 

The nature of Valencia's win tells its own story: goalless after 25 minutes, within six minutes, the home side had scored four goals - yes, four - against a Malaga defence which had the meanest opposition-shots-to-goals ratio before last night. After the game, captain Welligton and Julio Baptista confirmed that the players would be meeting the owners to discuss the future of the team next week. "The sad thing is the team was playing without heart," Al-Thani tweeted after the game.

 

That future looks certain to be without Isco, the young Spanish winger who turned 21 on Sunday and was booed mercilessly by the home support, as he left Valencia when he was 19 after Malaga had met his €6m release clause. Jeremy Toulalan is also on the wanted list at Atletico Madrid and this squad is on the verge of a mass exodus.

 

Perhaps what makes this defeat even tougher to bear is that Valencia have been having their own off-field problems; earlier this month, Manuel Llorente stepped down as president and his replacement, Federico Varona, resigning less than two weeks into the position citing "personal insults and abuse". "We don't know what the future is, it's all up in the air," said Roberto Soldado, though he didn't seem too bothered as he scored twice on Saturday night.

 

Where does this leave Valencia in the battle for fourth? They are still two points behind Real Sociedad, the surprise outfit led by Frenchman Philippe Montanier, who dropped points in Sunday night's draw at Osasuna. Sociedad are 1.5 to stay in fourth, Valencia are 2.25 while Malaga, whose hopes are now surely over, are out to 6.0.

 

And while those within Malaga are hopeful that Uefa's European ban might be overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, now they have paid outstanding debts owed to other clubs, it seems that another shot at Europe might be beyond them; and next season, with the prospect of the coach and their best players moving on elsewhere, their fleeting challenge at rubbing shoulders with Europe's elite could be over almost as quickly as it began.

 

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