A record for Albiol who was able to fulfill it at Espanyol

“While we spent 15, teams like Betis spent 65 or 70 each preseason, that’s why I understood that this second year was going to be very complicated. So it was. In addition, we let important players like Albiol, Banega, Mariano…“. The phrase is from Quique Sanchez Flores In one of his multiple interviews, he once left Espanyol, fired with five days to go before the end of the 2017-18 championship.

Against one of those three names Espanyol will face this Sunday. Raúl Albiol, in addition, will be one of the protagonists when he completes 500 games between Serie A and the First Division. And he will do it dressed in yellow, but one day in June 2017 his story could change and he could have reached that number dressed in blue and white.

Before the end of the season, both the sports director Jordi Lardín and the general director Ramon Robert began to plan the following season with Quique. The coach put several names on the table, including Albiolplayer who had already had in Valencia and Getafe and had always trusted him, so the intentions of the Napoli player at that time squared with the Blue and Whites’ interest.

His clause was six million, an amount that Chen Yansheng’s Espanyol could face. But then disaster struck. The ascending contracts that had been made to players like Pablo Piatti, Leo Baptistao or Hernán Pérez (among others) had exceeded the salary limit. The Albiol operation became impossible. The player endured one more year in Italy, where he played 20 league games, and the following year he already wore yellow. He became a pillar.

In these five markets, Espanyol has spent 22 million on central defenders after regulating their salary limit that summer. Nine million were paid for Leandro Cabrera, 8.5 for Fernando Calero, two million for Naldo Gomes, one million for Sergi Gómez, 500,000 for Mario Hermoso plus the arrival of players from the subsidiary or free players such as Lluís López, Sergio Sánchez and Bernardo Espinosa. The club received 12.5 million from the sale of the man from Madrid, now at Atlético de Madrid.