Football Season Guide

Real Valladolid are returning to LaLiga after a four-year absence, having won promotion last year through the Segunda division play-offs. They were as low as 11th with eight weeks of the season to go and they made the decision to sack coach Luis Cesar and to bring in Sergio Gonzalez Soriano, who steered the team to fifth in the table and who then oversaw a successful play-off run against Sporting Gijon and Numancia. Sergio will be staying on as coach and Real Valladolid will be hoping that they can carry over last year’s momentum into the LaLiga season, while praying that their impressive home support can make them a tough team to beat at the Estadio Jose Zorrilla. Their 41-year-old coach has some LaLiga experience too, which will be useful, given that he coached Espanyol’s first team for a season and a half between 2014 and 2015. Overall, this season should be tough for Real Valladolid. As always happens to the play-off victor, there isn’t much time to get business done in the transfer window, with the play-offs running to the middle of June, and this squad looks like one of the weaker ones in the division, if not the weakest. The club has brought in a couple of exciting wingers, hiring Ivi from Levante and Keko from Malaga, but they have lost a number of players too, even if only two of their 11 most-used players from 2017/18 have exited. Most significantly, Real Valladolid have lost star centre-forward Jaime Mata, who scored 33 of their league goals last season, which was 42% of their 78 goals total. Replacing him will be a tough ask, even more so given that Real Valladolid haven’t yet brought in any new strikers this transfer window, with just over a week to go until they take part in the opening match against Girona. It’s tough, therefore, to see where this team’s goals are going to come from, which is especially worrying given they won promotion in spite of a leaky defence, one which conceded the fifth most goals in the second division last year.