I just got an e-mail from my sister Beth, who's not a soccer fan at all, but complemented me on the blog, saying that she enjoyed reading it. Thanks again, sis.
Wish I was enjoying writing it just as much at the moment, but that's kind of hard. Teams in Argentina have no owner, the team president is in charge, and as a the new man is claiming his office, he's found that the old one left the building, but none of it's contents.
To put it another way, as the Ratopez left, he took every thing that wasn't nailed down with him. He even left the club treasury bare, while, once he realized that he probably wouldn't keep his office, he stopped paying the team employees, including the players.
Actually, he went beyond that. The security cameras, and all the wiring that went with them were missing as well. The building that housed the offices is not in the team's name, the player contracts were gone.
Lorente has sent a delegate to the offices of the AFA to make copies of the missing player contracts. This leads me to a new fear... what if those contracts aren't made out so the players are signed to Newell's, but instead to Lopez himself? It seems farfetched, but it's been common in recent years that Argentine player contracts, expecially those still playing in the domestic league, are owned by the agents (just look into Carlos Tevez and his contract, no, Manchester United do not hold his contract, but have him "on loan.")
Meanwhile, I just tried to go to http://www.pasionrojinegra.com, with no luck. And Gamboa has quit the club.
It's good that Lopez is gone, but things are going to get worst before they get better. I hope Lorente is up to the task of cleaning out this cesspool Lopez has left in his wake.
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The new admin is going to take him to court, probably civil and criminal once they figure out the mess they are in.
Look for players to leave. Boca is after Schiavi. I am thinking they will have to sell him and one more just to catch up. I think they owe the players somewhere around $300,000 US just in bounced checks, plus Nov and Dec salaries.
I hate to see Schiavi go, but he is old and Insaurralde played well, so pair him in the back with Spolli.
Hopefully the can recover some of what was lost; pasionrojinegra.com is still down. No surprize there, but so much for downloading any game videos.
If, and when the site is back up and running, if I were to give any advise to Lorente it would be to charge a small fee for downloading game videos, or place them in an area where you pay for a userid & password.
Of course, if there is a need to pay, I'd also expect an upgrade so they didn't take forever to download.
The team has to have money to survive, and moving into a merchandising age on the website could be a real boost if handled correctly.
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