Espanyol unveil their own Kaka
While the Head of Player Presentations at the Camp Nou has spent the past few months hitting the refresh button on their Facebook page every three seconds in a desperate attempt to pass the time, their counterpart in EspanyolâÂÂs Pratland - or Cornella el Prat to use the correct title of the clubâÂÂs new home - has been doing the rarest of things for a Spaniard during the summer.
And thatâÂÂs working.
And not just lazing about, moaning about the hot weather AS IF IT ISNâÂÂT LIKE THIS EVERY FRACKINâ YEAR!
Anyway. Monday was a big day in the blue-and-white-stripey part of the Catalan capital as it saw the public unveiling of EspanyolâÂÂs latest trinket, Shunsuke Nakamura, who arrives on a freebie from Celtic.
"So, what's Gary Caldwell really like?"
With La Liga Loca not having seen a game of Scottish football since 1967, the blog has no idea if the midfielder is any good - not always an issue for an Espanyol signing - but he certainly brought the locals out of their hovels with 6,000 turning up to see him kick a ball around and say that he had already eaten some tomatoes on bread - a prized local snack.
But more importantly, NakamuraâÂÂs presentation attracted 300 journalists, with a large chunk of them coming from Japan, where the event was broadcast live.
The best features, fun and footballing quizzes, straight to your inbox every week.
The former Celtic man was wheeled out again on Tuesday and was seen fannying about at the airport with a couple of team-mates to advertise the new Espanyol home and away shirts.
Wheeze-bag Espanyol president, Daniel Sánchez Llibre compared the signing of Nakamura to that of Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo.
But aside from being completely wrong on this point, the Perico big-cheese was also completely right to a certain extent.
La Liga Loca is no expert in anything - aside from Zombie warfare - but it imagines that the interest in Japan in all things Espanyol was fairly limited until now.
However, the signing of Nakamura massively increases the clubâÂÂs profile in a potentially lucrative market.
NakamuraâÂÂs arrival is another small sign that those lesser mortals living in la Liga are finally realising that there is money to be made in them there hills outside of Spain.
Joan Laporta and Florentino Pérez have both mentioned the importance of paying more attention to the wider world, with the latter chewing over the concept of 3pm kick-offs to compete with the Premier League and to attract more viewers in Asia.
And when both these clubs both want the same thing, it tends to happen.
Laporta and Perez ponder
While La Liga Loca is always the first to moan and whine about midnight matches and games that start on one day and finish on another, it is not sure that the league wouldnâÂÂt lose a bit of its magic with early afternoon start times.
There is also the inconvenience to Atlético Madrid fans who would have to get up very early indeed to start the beer-boozing and ciggie-rolling to reach their normal levels of high-as-a-kiteness for their home games.
However, any radical changes are likely to be a long way off for the simple facts that the game in Spain continues to be run by prongs and that the TV dispute that has caused so many problems to the sport has yet to be solved, despite a truce being called for the new season.
While some of the clubs in Spain may be thinking about the wider world and the riches to be earned, those running la Liga will always be several steps behind.
---------------------------------------------
FourFourTwo.com: More to read...
La Liga Loca home
Blogs home
Latest Spain news
News home
Interviews home
Forums home
FourFourTwo.com home
