**Rock Bottom**

Once proud and strong, Sevilla FC is in a difficult situation. After celebrating years of European success with their famous "grow to sell" model, the board got overambitious to become the fourth Spanish top team. Heavy investments were made into expensive players to fight for the league title and be competitive in the Champions League. The opposite happened: those expensive players underperformed, with the club taking a tumble in the league rankings. In the last three seasons, Sevilla FC crashed down to 12th, 14th and 17th in La Liga, while the club's debt has been growing rapidly. Since Monchi left as technical director, the "grow to sell" model has been in shambles under Victor Orta's leadership, while managers were hired and fired every few months. Something needed to change for Sevilla FC not to get crushed under the weight of a 300 million euro debt.

**A New Beginning**

After a fairly disastrous 2024/2025 season, in which Sevilla FC barely avoided relegation, the board finally stood up and fired Victor Orta. In Antonio Cordón, they found the man to rebuild the club. His objectives are clear:

1. Bring the club back to a healthy financial situation within four years
2. Focus on youth development, not on established stars
3. Buy and sell players at the right time: no one is irreplacable

Having that in mind, Cordón started with hiring Matias Almeyda as the manager of the first team. The duo was up for a challenging pre-season, in which important players needed to be sold and money for reinforcements would be extremely limited. This lead to the team saying goodbye to **Loïc Badé** (Strasbourg), **Dodi Lukébakio** (Napoli), **Kelechi Iheanacho** (Celtic), **Rafa Mir** (Valencia), **Stanis Idumbo** (Groningen), **Chidera Ejuke** (Dortmund) and **Alvaro** (Celta de Vigo). Also, **Manu Bueno** (Espanyol) and **Alberto Flores** (Granada) were sent out on loans for their development.

This brought a considerable amount of money to the club, but only a small amount of it could be spent on hiring new players. Most importantly, Sevilla FC needed a new goalkeeper. After some deliberation, **Iñaki Peña** was hired from Barcelona, where he got limited opportunities. The second new signing was **Alfon**, who joined from Celta de Vigo to replace Lukébakio.

**Goals for Season 2024/2025**

The goals set for Matias Almeyda are fairly simple: avoid relegation, while developing talented players like **Carmona**, **Agoumé**, **Juanlu** and **Salas**. To achieve this, Almeyda will have to count on the leadership of players like **Suso**, **Gudelj** and **Marçao**, who can guide the youngsters and provide experience to the squad. As long as Suso doesn't get injured, Almeyda is confident that a mid table position is achievable for the team. At least the pre-season tournament provided reasons for optimism: Sevilla FC managed to win it with small victories against Leeds United (2-1), Parma (1-0) and Hoffenheim (1-0). The Sevilla defense was surprisingly solid, while **Peque** and **Isaac** displayed their goal scoring abilities. Now let's see what the team can do in La Liga, and maybe deadline day will still bring some changes, for better or for worse!

Sevilla FC: desperate times, desperate measures!