After a week when a printing error in the USA edition of Easy Sky Diving was corrected – on page 8, line 7 “State zip code” should read “Pull rip cord”! – Real Mallorca fans’ patience is rapidly running out as our precarious fourth bottom league position sees the team in a slow but unstoppable decline. Sunday evening’s home game (November 9 at 18:30) in Son Moix against high flying Getafe is a game we just have to win.
Statistics don’t lie, of the last 30 league matches (the final 19 of last season and the 11 we’ve played this one) we’ve won just six. That means 20% of the matches played in 2025 we’ve only managed to accumulate 30% of points available (27 out of a possible 90!). If these are not relegation figures, I don’t know what are.
As the team flirts with relegation, we’ve only kept one clean sheet in 11 games and conceded 18 goals. This time last year we were 7th, conceding just eight times. It’s clear Real Mallorca have a huge problem but as yet coach Arrasate hasn’t come up with a solution. Our normally rock-like, long-time, centre back pairing of Raillo and Valjent look past their sell-by dates.
Both seem tired of playing together year after year without anybody threatening their positions.
Colombian left back Mojica, despite being a superb athlete, combines forays into attack, pings crosses into the opposition penalty area leaving a huge gap for opposition forwards to take advantage of down the other end.
Midfielder Sergi Darder from Arta, who signed from Espanyol two years ago, was hailed as the return of the prodigal son. At Espanyol he never had a bad game, now he’s slow and erratic. Portuguese work-horse Samu Costa, who was on the transfer market last season for 15 million euros, has become a liability. He’s in the referee’s face early doors, gets booked, and has to walk on eggshells for his remaining time on the pitch.
A few games ago, we thought we’d turned the corner after winning in Sevilla. Not so, once again, passively conceding soft goals is the most notable aspect of our defence. There’s also a complete absence of creativity in midfield which consequently means no ammunition for the strikers. Expensive signing Pablo Torre from Barcelona contributes nothing and spends most time warming the bench. Jan Virgili, our main “bright spark” down the left, spends his time looking for the ball!
As if things in defence weren’t bad enough, our brilliant young goalkeeper, 23-year-old Ibiza-born Leo Roman, who slipped in training 10 days ago, received news during the week from a scan that he had significantly torn his right hamstring. He’s not expected back until at least Christmas! He became our fifth player to suffer hamstring problems this season.
Leo’s replacement is a young 6ft 10in Finnish rookie called Lucas Bergström, and he had a very difficult baptism of fire last Sunday. For any defence, a reliable goalkeeper is vital and young Lucas didn’t inspire confidence, not on the ground, not in the air, and not with his feet. Our other replacement is 41-year-old “Pichu” Cuellar who ironically played his one and only La Liga game against Sunday’s opponents Getafe in May 2024 when we won 1-2.
Unlike Mallorca, Sunday’s visitors Getafe have made a great start to the season and lie seventh. They have a lower budget than us with half our fan base and a stadium in Madrid half closed due to renovations. Before this campaign started, Getafe were struggling to register players and had to virtually give away their best ones for “pipas” (dried sunflower seeds). One of them was Paraguayan Alderete to Sunderland, which allowed Getafe’s bosses to register new players.
That means throughout most of Spain, football clubs have to sell their best assets well below their market value in order to survive. Getafe’s style of football is direct, physical and difficult to watch and isn’t designed to please, but to frustrate. They are known as masters of the dark arts and don’t take many prisoners, with excessive time-wasting, heavy challenges and plenty of needle. Their coach Jose Bordalas is spikey and sneery, making him the ideal pantomime villain, a part he plays with relish.
For sure, Sunday’s game will be a tough one for Real Mallorca.
AND FINALLY, a friend of mine has just come back from a holiday in Florida. He was in the local grocery store in Miami and a boy bagging his groceries asked if he wanted paper or plastic bags.
Telling the boy he didn’t mind and that he could decide for my friend, the boy looked at him straight in the eye and said “Sorry man, you have to pick, baggers can’t be choosers!!”