Mallorca in the House

By: Jeremy | March 18th, 2008

Although most of my time at the Offside is spent reading about Italy and their teams, I still check the La Liga area and what is going on with those clubs. It is great reading what other passionate fans have to say about their teams performance. However, I am disappointed that there are not more clubs represented. Therefore, while I am doing the Cagliari blog for Serie A, I cannot let my team in Spain continue to go unmentioned so I am going to try my best to write my thoughts on Mallorca.

I saw my first European soccer match in Spain almost 20 years ago while in college. My roommate was from Mallorca and I got to spend a summer seeing the sights(youth is wasted on the young) and staying with his family in Palma. Knowing I was an NASL fan and since we were both soccer players, he made sure I got to see soccer in Europe before we returned to the States so we hit the San Moix and saw a great game. I cant say I remember much about it, but I saw how great the Spanish fans were and how much they loved their team. Everyday soccer in a European stadium was similar to the Soccer Bowl I saw in San Diego as a kid in 1982. I can only imagine how loud and passionate the people would be when the game was between bigger clubs or meant more then just an early season encounter between mediocre teams. Someday I hope to find out. I became a Mallorca fan right there and have followed them to this day.

At first, it was hard to get much if any news on them as there was no internet. With the internet improving its content over the past few years allowing for us to read about our teams in Europe, I could not only keep up, but learn more about the players on the teams I supported. The past 10 years have been great especially since Mallorca has pretty much played La Liga football and even appeared in the Champions League and won the Copa Del Rey. We even had a run of La Liga on the Fox Soccer Channel a few years ago.

Just like being a Cagliari fan in Italy, I watch this club face relegation almost every year. We have managed to survive and are far better then Cagliari, but this team has always had the talent to finish in the upper half of La Liga. With players like Etoo, Pandiani, and other great ones putting on the shirt, you would hope that relegation wouldn’t be such a regular concern.

This year is again more about safety then challenging for european football. This is frustrating as this team seems to have as much talent as it has in years. With Guiza, Arango, Ibagaza, Navarro, Jonas Guitierrez, and a good young keeper in Moya, I expected more. I also like Manzano as the gaffer and it seems like there is a real foundation for success. Instead with ten weeks to go, we are three points away from relegation.

There are eight teams for one relegation spot (Levante and Murcia I assume are going down already), so it would be tragic if Mallorca go down, but I want to try and post about the club on a fairly regular basis, especially with relegation not out of the question. It has been a frustrating up and down season with too many ties, losses pulled from the jaws of victory, yet also some great wins over Real Madrid who we seem to play our best football against. European football is really going to be tough to achieve this year, but this team is as talented as the clubs in La Liga currently holding some of the European spots.

I hope the other remaining clubs who are not represented will pick up some bloggers to talk about their teams. There is no reason why the teams in La Liga cannot be represented in the style the teams in Serie A are represented on the Offside.

Let’s hope there are some Mallorca fans out there. If so, send a shout out and together we can help talk about the club and maybe inspire it to a better position in the table.

Ill start posting about the standings and upcoming games and results.

Thanks to Chris at the Offside for giving me a run with the Mallorca blog.