“It could be my best game in the First Division with the Espanyol shirt”. The phrase is from Fernando Calero, the starter against Getafe, who acknowledges that “I had a good game”. It was not be for lowerly. The parakeet team kept a clean sheet again since November and achieved the first victory in 2022, and Calero had a lot to do to stop, for example, Enes Unal, one of the fittest strikers in the championship. “I had several injuries and bad luck. I was never one hundred percent. Now I am, and I took advantage of it,” she valued.
Calero’s history with Espanyol has not been idyllicProof of this is that, three years after his arrival, I recognize that the center-back himself was his best parakeet game. “Since I arrived everything was complicated, like the descent, but I have been happy: last year I had continuity“, he remarks, while he is clear that “I train every day so that the coach gives me opportunities and make me a place in the lineup”.
These months of crisis in the team, where victory has been resisted, has not meant a lack of confidence. Calero explains that “we have not worked on other systems”, but “We have coached the mistakes made so as not to repeat them”. A way that has paid off. The man from Valladolid is clear that “when we don’t receive goals, we almost always win. That’s how it was at the beginning. Being so long receiving so many has been the cause of the bad results,” he warns, while acknowledging that Levante, bottom and at the same time next rival , “He has a spectacular team.”
The Spanish.
DPA via Europa Press
“I encourage you to join us and enjoy the show”
Although, with 32 points, Espanyol is in a nobody’s zone, far from relegation and also from Europe, close to sealing permanence, Calero confesses that the dressing room is “excited” and is “optimistic”and that the challenge is to win the next match, in Valencia against Levante, where the player from Valladolid, whose signing closed at 8.5 million, invites the fans. “I encourage you to join us and that we have a great result in this game. If you go you will enjoy the show”said.
Despite this, the results of Espanyol away from home do not invite that passion. Only the Blue and Whites got a victory, coincidentally in Mestalla against Valencia (1-2). Calero does not know why this descending line was out. “I don’t know how to say it honestly. The data is there, at home we are much stronger. Outside we must change the chip, maybe come out braver, but I don’t know. We want to be tough outside, that the rivals have it difficult, but I don’t know,” he insisted.