Last December 10, at the Espanyol Shareholders' Meeting, Chen Yansheng gave his last words on the sporting situation of his club. At that time, the blue and white team was bottom with nine points, five from salvation. 22 games were ahead and the figure of Pablo Machín was beginning to be questioned. The president was optimistic, although for this, and as usual, he tugged at his script of Chinese sayings.
“According to a Chinese saying, there is no mountain that can stop a riverbed. In other words, we are all dedicating the maximum effort to achieve sporting success. With the help and success of the parakeets, we are sure that we will soon get out of this situation, “said the president, involved with the entity from a distance, with a successful capital increase of 50 million and an investment of another 40 in the January market to reinforce the workforce, which, however, has not been successful.
Since that date, the president, who maintains contact by videoconference with all levels of the club, only released a message in the midst of a pandemic by COVID-19, on the same line as the team four months earlier. “In China we have lived through the pandemic, and I understand the difficulties you are going through right now. Only together will we get ahead and overcome the bad times. Much encouragement, parrots!”, a merely institutional message.
Since 2018, Chen's disconnection with Espanyol's public life has been a reality. Far are the first press conferences and media interviews of his first two years, in which he proclaimed a Champions club, a splendid future. Now the president acts more like a bureaucrat, who takes care of the economy (he has already recovered the investment) and makes a take-off with those responsible for corporate and sports management when they are badly done.
Now, Rufete and Josep Maria Durán are the decision makers, as before were Jordi Lardín and Ramon Robert or Roger Guasch and Óscar Perarnau. Each with its own criteria and independence, only subject to the economic criteria that, by not investing in the summer, have ended this dreaded decline, being a reality in the entity's best financial moment. The mount stopped the river.