After a week when I enquired of a newly-wed neighbour how things were going – she commented “Fine, but nobody told me that when you get a husband the ears are sold separately !” – Real Mallorca’s 21-year-old midfielder Kang In Lee is set to leave these island shores in the Summer.
According to Ser Deportivos Baleares, Unai Emery’s Aston Villa are willing to pay the asking price of around 20 million euros. Kang In Lee arrived here two years ago from Valencia on a free and it’s no surprise clubs in the Premier League are keen to get his signature as he’s had a brilliant season both here and for his country in the World Cup.
There’s no doubt Mallorca’s expected mid-table finish to this season has been made possible in part by stellar performances by the young South Korean. It was clear in the Winter transfer window that he was wanting to move on but he was persuaded to stay until this Summer so his leaving was only a matter of time. His move to England could be one of the biggest transfers in Spain’s La Liga this Summer, leaving RCD Mallorca with a healthy sum in the bank to find a like for like quality replacement.
With just nine games left to play in La Liga 2022/23, Real Mallorca are virtually safe from relegation after their dogged 0-1 win at Celta Vigo on Monday night. Results last weekend were favourable for the Palma side and we can hopefully look forward to another three points on Sunday night in the Son Moix (kick off 18:30)
against 15th placed Getafe. They’re not known for footballing finesse and are considered one of the more physical sides in top flight Spanish football ! Up front they have Turkish predator Enas Unal who is level with Vedat Muriqi on 12 goals. Monday night’s results see us 10 points ahead of a dying Valencia as we, at last, buried our away game hoodoo of not winning on the road since November.
A win against Getafe (even a point would favour us more than them) would take us up to 40 mystical points which would more or less guarantee survival. That would mean the club’s objective has been met and we would enjoy the last eight games with the pressure taken off. This is a huge difference from last season when it was all down to the final game at Osasuna – which we won 0-2.
More good news for the club is the imminent contract renewal of club captain Antonio Raillo who’s expected to put pen to paper on a two-year deal keeping him here until 2026. The agreement between the player and club is almost done and dusted and the idea is that the Cordoba-born centre half will retire from active football with RCD Mallorca. Raillo is one of our longest-serving players even staying with the club when we were in the “abyss” of Segunda B a few years ago.
He was about to join Nottingham Forest in January 2019 but then-CEO Maheta Molango managed to retain him by promising him a renewal that never happened, leaving Raillo outraged and feeling mistreated.
The arrival of present sporting director Pablo Ortells unclogged the situation and the player signed an extension to 2024. Since then Raillo’s influence has been brilliant. We’ve had some top central defenders over the years and he’s certainly up there with the best of them, even laying on the winning goal for Amath on Monday night. Raillo’s married to a Mallorcan girl and his kids are Mallorcan, which makes him part and parcel of the local island community and it’s where he wants to stay until he hangs up his boots.
Club owners can sometimes make or break a football team, a typical example here in Spain is Valencia. Their fans over the past few years have been far from happy with their owner, the billionaire entrepreneur from Singapore, Peter Lim, who took over in 2014.
Lim imposed a fire sale when he sold off their best players to make ends meet and a combination of bad management and mounting debts have made the club into a “basket case.” Things weren’t helped by the admission of Lim’s daughter Kim (now club president) who claimed the family own the club and “we can do anything we want.” Fans don’t matter one iota to them.
In contrast, RCD Mallorca are financially in a good place. Our American owners have taken the club out of bankruptcy and have stabilised it financially and sportingly. Without making any kerfuffle, our owners have made a remarkable difference to our well-being and have done it with little fuss.
Our president is an ex professional men’s doubles tennis player, Andy Kohlberg. He takes a back seat and lets our CEO, Alfonso Diaz, and sporting director, Pablo Ortells, run the club here on the island. These American owners have more than fulfilled their promises.
They said they’d be here for at least five years, which is now seven, and have achieved what seemed unachievable, reaching an agreement with our landlords, Palma City Council, to make drastic alterations to the Son Moix which will be spectacular when finished next year. They also managed an agreement with the co-owners of our old ground, Luis Sitjar, after 20 years of conflict, and our squad contains players with quality like Kang In Lee, Muriqi and Rajkovic. All three of them are causing a lot of interest from some of Europe’s big-money clubs.
AND FINALLY, a woman was concerned that her prize-winning Schnauzer was going deaf as it wouldn’t come when she called it, so she took it to the vet. He examined the dog and said “There’s nothing wrong with his hearing, the problem is excess hair growing in the ears.” The vet told her to go to the chemist and get some depilatory hair remover. She went to the chemist and picked up a small tube of Veet, and seeing there was nothing about dogs in the instructions, asked the pharmacist for advice. “Use it full strength for leg hair and diluted by half for underarms.” The woman explained “Thanks but I want it for my Schnauzer.” Taken aback, the chemist suggested “In that case, you’d better use it at one-third strength...and I wouldn’t advise bike riding for a day or two !”
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