The Monterrey experiment got out of hand

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The experiment now seems to have gotten out of hand. Because what was supposed to be a simple suggestion has turned into a programmatic manifesto. For a couple of years, Club de Fútbol Monterrey has had it in their head to become the new Sevilla . Or at least its B version . A goal that the Mexican club is pursuing with almost total devotion. The first piece was placed in the summer of 2023, when “Los Rayados”, the striped ones, decided to bring home Jesus Corona, the right-back who had started his climb to European football right from Monterrey. First Twente, then Porto, finally Sevilla. He had remained in red and white for just a year and a half. Just enough time to win a Europa League against Roma without ever even stepping onto the pitch. “Fanaticism consists in doubling your efforts when you have forgotten the goal,” wrote Santillana . An aphorism that describes rather well the policy that the club has followed in the last twelve months.

In the summer, Monterrey fished Oliver Torres from Sevilla, but above all Lucas Ocampos , a winger with intermittent talent and a less than brilliant past between Genoa and Milan. The most sensational move was made in the winter. On February 6, the club's website announced the reaching of an agreement with Sergio Ramos, someone who over the course of his career has been many things at once : a jewel of Sevilla's youth system, a totem of Real, leader of the Spanish national team and then a return horse to Andalusia when his age and physical form were no longer enviable. "Thanks to his leadership, defensive strength, offensive ability and winning mentality, Ramos joins Monterrey with the aim of making history for the Albiazul team," the club assured.

Things went differently. The centre-back played 8 games in the Clausura tournament, scoring three goals. But he will be remembered above all for the match against Pumas, when he earned his thirtieth career expulsion for kicking Guillermo Martínez in the backside. The arrival of the Spaniard, who had been sidelined for eight months, responded to a specific idea . Replicate the media hype that Pumas had obtained with the arrival of James Rodriguez.

Monterrey's season was not the best. The club was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Clausura tournament by Toluca. Something very close to bankruptcy . So Martin Demichelis was fired. The problems, however, were deeper. Over time, Monterrey had created a small Spanish colony. In addition to the former Sevilla players, there were also Hector Moreno, a Mexican with a dual citizenship who, in addition to a past as a ghost of the opera with Roma, could boast a stint at Espanyol and one at Real Sociedad, and Sergio Canales, an attacking midfielder with a past as a shooting star at Real Madrid and a career spent with ups and downs between Valencia, Real Sociedad and Betis.

In Mexico, Canales has proven to be a complicated player . On the one hand, he has scored 8 goals and provided 4 assists. On the other, he has had a more than stormy relationship with Demichelis. On April 3, the player, now thirty-four, had an altercation with the coach. Then, when saying goodbye, he decided to kick a glass door, causing a wound that required ten stitches. Since then, he has not taken the field . Now the club has entrusted the bench to Domenec Torrent, Guardiola's assistant at Barcelona, ​​Bayern and City. He will have the task of relaunching Canales and Ramos, but also of demonstrating that Monterrey (whose squad is worth less than Alessandro Bastoni alone) is much more than a Brancaleone army. And he will have to succeed tomorrow morning, in the not exactly easy challenge against an Inter looking for redemption after the disappointment of the Champions League final lost against a stellar PSG.

Carlos Salcedo, a former full-back for the national team with a stint at Fiorentina, will not be there. He hit the headlines in Mexico a year ago when his sister Paula, a national TV presenter, was shot dead. At the time, his mother, Maria Isabel Hernandez Navarro, blamed her son for the murder. A terrible story denied by justice, however. A year later, in fact, the police arrested two men who confessed to killing Paula to steal the money she needed to buy drugs. But that's another story.

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