Marked for Daniel Esteban
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market11 Jun 2046
Mallorca say no — this time
The offer from Santos for Alberto Márquez was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Squad11 Jun 2046
Fran Kasumović: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Mallorca have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad11 Jun 2046
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Mallorca have had the benefit of it.
Market11 Jun 2046
The name of Richard Hughes has come up in conversations Mallorca were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad11 Jun 2046
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Carlos Vidal and Mallorca agree another 2 years.
Market11 Jun 2046
Tomás Esteban is 20, and Mallorca have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match16 Dec 2045
Bragging rights belong to Sevilla for another year after a 2‑1 win over Betis in front of a full house.
Squad18 Dec 2045
A knee injury of the worst kind for Julen González
29 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sevilla lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad18 Dec 2045
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 61 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings18 Dec 2045
Beat anybody else and it is three points. Beat them and it is a story a city tells for a decade. Sevilla have their man.
Market18 Dec 2045
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Sevilla is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Boardroom18 Dec 2045
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Kiril Denysov has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Match16 Dec 2045
Sevilla make home a hard place to visit
10 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad18 Dec 2045
Vincenzo Damiano falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad18 Dec 2045
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad25 Sep 2045
The words a physio says slowly. 87 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad25 Sep 2045
A fracture rules Mario Ortiz out for 43 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Sevilla will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings25 Sep 2045
At 37 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.07 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market25 Sep 2045
Only the photograph left for Luis García
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Luis García will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Sevilla the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad25 Sep 2045
Vincenzo Damiano falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Match23 Sep 2045
Three points for Sevilla, 1‑0 the final word against Albacete in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Squad25 Sep 2045
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Daniel Esteban, and the manager let it.
Player ratings25 Sep 2045
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings25 Sep 2045
14 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market12 Jun 2045
$5.4M is a serious amount of money and it does not play centre-forward. Everybody in the dressing room knows who used to be looked at when it went wrong.
Squad12 Jun 2045
A knee injury of the worst kind for Fran Kasumović
63 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Mallorca lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The terraces12 Jun 2045
Supporters turn on the $5.4M sale of Daniel Esteban
He is going to Sevilla, the club has $5.4M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Boardroom12 Jun 2045
Still no name above the door at Mallorca
Day 11 of the vacancy. Candidates have been priced, sounded out and quietly ruled out — and the caretaker’s win ratio is becoming an argument all by itself.
Squad12 Jun 2045
Hector Rangel falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad12 Jun 2045
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Carlos Vidal commits to Mallorca for another 2 years.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Jun 2045
Miguel García breaks a bone — 85 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 85 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad12 Jun 2045
Daniel Esteban gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Daniel Esteban has just signed for Sevilla, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad12 Jun 2045
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Market12 Jun 2045
Every dressing room knows how to read a signing like this one. Daniel Esteban is not here to sit and wait indefinitely, and the man whose place he has been bought to take knows it better than anyone.
Market12 Jun 2045
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
The terraces12 Jun 2045
Sevilla spend $5.4M on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $5.4M for Daniel Esteban, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Boardroom12 Jun 2045
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Gonzalo Ramírez has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Sevilla have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Squad12 Jun 2045
Vincenzo Damiano falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Market12 Jun 2045
Nobody at the club will say out loud who this signing is for, which is how you know exactly who it is for. Mariano Cipriani has been brought in to take a shirt somebody is still wearing.