Chen’s Spanish metaverse

The day in which Espanyol suffered one of the most painful goleadas (and bulky) of the Cornellà era, on Friday against Betis (1-4), they met ssix exact years since he took office of the presidency of the club, and of the property, Chen Yansheng. Of the affirmation that it would be his investment, but also his passion. And of the prediction of play in the Champions “in less than three years“. After six, double, with a share in the Europa League, a descent and a promotion involved but without a trace of the Champions League, the x-ray of the moment holds a transversal disagreement between the entity and the social mass, after all its reason for being (should). Even between the entity and its own idiosyncrasy.

It can be felt in the atmosphere, not only on social networks that are sometimes so angry, but also in the supporters clubs and in the stands of the RCDE Stadium, a latent divorce between the path of the club and the ambitions of an exhausted hobby. That “where do we come from” pronounced last week by the CEO, Jose Maria Duran, not only places Espanyol in a realistic scenario, that of a team that lives for now in a quiet area of the table in the case of a recently promoted (with 86 seasons of history in the First Division, yes), but he should also understand the boredom of an unconditional fan during the perfect storm of the passage through Second and the pandemic, but that no longer settle for more of the same. With transition years that seem like groundhog day.

The “objective” referring to the mere permanence, the “consolidation in First” of the fifth club with the most matches in the category, including –why not say it– the missed opportunity to rub elbows (and even overcome, at times) with the eternal rival, Barcelona, in their greatest moment of hardship, they burn among the social mass. And till collide with the “look up” (euphemism for fighting for Europe) often pronounced by Vicente Moreno and the players. But behind that circumstance, well with 27 points the team is not in a critical situation, far from it –in fact, there are still trains to get on the struggle for “above”–, it is located the course of the club itself. The uncertainty of whether he really bets on going up the steps or If this area of ​​​​nobody is already good for him, with some noise from time to time but with minimum objectives met, enough to be accountable to Chen at the end of the exercise, and something else.

And if the course of the club is doubted in most cases it is not because of what happens in the offices, but on the pitch. That is another question. What does Espanyol play?. And not just because of your system. The chameleonic style of Vicente Moreno, once a trap for rivals, is slowly becoming vagueness, in rudder turns unexpected but not therefore unpredictable for opponents who are converting the greatest virtues of Espanyol –like the set piece– in some of its main cracks. And a secrecy that grows as the results diminish, which projects an image – wrongly or not – of a certain weakness.

The same players son capable of the best and the worst. And to which a game goes wrong, as in this start of 2022 without victories, they go sprouting vices of the year of descent, recognized by the footballers themselves: if the context of the game becomes unfavorable, they become obfuscated and nothing comes of it. Plan Bs don’t usually work either.

That the spare parts do not take effect, with exceptions, and the tenures are divided between 14 or 15 applicants open another melon, which is the one template settings, which being fair has given to rise with solvency and for that consolidation in First. About half of the signings of the summer are being habitual, when not fixed, in the scheme of the season. Others were acquired by a compulsory purchase option inherited from the ascent and remain unpublished. And some didn’t even come. An unsolved mystery was the ‘6’, which was listed as priority, need, urgency of the summer market but it was never incorporated. The same thing that happens this January with an extreme, surely the most uninhabited demarcation, and that however has been neglected in favor of a (another) midfielder, a priori in key to the future.

But none of these questions can be answered without going back to the origin of everything. To the owner for six years of more than 99 percent of the shares of Espanyol. What is Chen Yansheng up to?. He has cleaned up the club, by dint of invest around 200 million of euros, has certainly continued to inject capital, saving the economy, at critical moments such as the decline. You will now perceive the multi-million dollar loans from CVC. And, in turn, he will assume his second loss exercise, so what budget transfer benefits of 20 million. And with that, the file will return to the starting box: planning, signings, style of play, objectives…

Chen is there, but he is not. And vice versa. As if the 10,000 kilometers that separate Barcelona from Guangdong were not enough, the pandemic has kept him for two years, since his last visit in February 2020, in a kind of metaverse, happier but far from reality, perhaps the metaphor of that distance that the social mass feels between what his Espanyol had represented and what is offered today. Surely that is the reason why, without the need for a new catastrophe of results like the one two seasons ago, simply with a totally reversible bad streak, that feeling of rootlessness emerges that from the outside may seem exaggerated. To think of themselves as strangers in (what was once) their own home. Six years later.