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Kick forward of the Board of Directors of Sevilla Football Club. Pepe Castro as president, José María del Nido Carrasco as vice-president, Diego Alonso as coach and the promise of a new stadium as candy for less than exquisite palates. The threat of José María del Nido Benavente, the lightning bolt that never ceases, is still there; But it is still too early to consummate his plan of revenge. Time moves slowly. The club continues its flight into the unknown. Broken inside. With disappointing football. Embraced by credits and the reduction of wage costs. Crisis. What a crisis.

"You never know what's going to happen on Falcon Crest," says Angela Channing with a glass of champagne in her hand in one of her episodes. From California's Napa Valley to Seville's Nervión neighbourhood there are 20 hours of flight, but the tension between families unites what seems distant. José María del Nido Benavente wants to recover what was once his. His son objects. Pepe Castro takes advantage of their differences to extend his power. Traditional surnames, tension in the vicinity of the stadium and lawyers. Lots of lawyers. Sevilla Football Club is a series where only those in charge win and the fans always lose.

"My return is irreversible; if it's not tomorrow, it's the day after," said José María del Nido two years ago. But it won't be this fall, either. The "no" of the head of the Commercial Court number 2 diluted his hope. Del Nido wanted to have a say in the General Shareholders' Meeting held yesterday, but a pact signed in 2019 with the rest of the families has once again prevented it. The rejection of the precautionary measures requested by the former president forces him to continue waiting. The Castros, Guijarro, Alés and Carrión breathe a sigh of relief. Del Nido is dispatched in X.

Parricidal War

"Sevilla FC can't wait. The squatters have a pocket hurt, Sevilla hurts me," he wrote in a statement. In that agreement, which has frozen his options to return to command the club, it was agreed "the annual remuneration of the directors" that "will be 1% of the income of the fiscal year, both ordinary and extraordinary income being computed for these purposes". Amounts that can be around 750,000 euros per year, in the case of President José Castro, and more than 500,000 euros for the first vice-president, José María del Nido Carrasco.

The relationship between father and son is broken. Del Nido Benavente spent more than three and a half years in prison. Since his release from prison, all his life enthusiasm has been focused on returning to the presidency of the club of his heart. He feels betrayed by Junior, his son. He talks about sentimental and heroic reasons for the institutional and sporting deterioration of the entity, but from his hand also come some American investors, 777 partners, who already own shares in clubs such as Genoa, Vasco da Gama, Standard Liège, Red Star and Hertha Berlin. The son becomes strong. The father is frustrated and tired of trying.

Instability, interests and the drift of football mean that Sevilla fans are beginning to position themselves in a parricidal and endless war. In the matches, the whistles are blown at the current board and, as the return of Del Nido does not generate confidence, they subscribe to a third way, that of supporting the team until the families find a consensus solution that implies a succession that does not involve the arrival of foreign capital. A dream that doesn't seem to be embodied. Yesterday, the entertainment group Biris Norte was milling around the door of the Meliá Lebreros Hotel, where shareholders were debating and auditing the accounts. "Club adrift. Out with Sevilla," was the slogan on their banner.

Sevilla's General Shareholders' Meeting, held on Monday. Gogo Lobato

José María del Nido Carrasco, sooner or later, will be the next president of Sevilla FC. She has been preparing for it, with psychological support, coaching and even public speaking classes. His presence in the media, his "desire to be noticed that he is in charge", in the words of a club worker, broke one of the pillars of the entity and its successes: Ramón Rodríguez Verdejo, Monchi. Junior's Caesarism, who went so far as to make sporting decisions against Monchi's opinion, put an end to the idyll between the former goalkeeper born in San Fernando and the Board of Directors.

"I need to be a reference on a day-to-day basis, for everything, that's my way of understanding this. I could have stayed, but maybe the club model is different," he said in his farewell. Víctor Orta, his replacement, is already singled out by the fans for an erratic squad planning, the dismissal of José Luis Mendilibar and the whim of a Diego Alonso who is hardly a tightrope walker. The club arrived at the Shareholders' Meeting after a draw, yet another, for Sevilla in La Liga. It was against Villarreal, in another terrible clash. Diego Alonso has only won one game, against C.D. Quintanar, in the Copa del Rey. The Uruguayan has played ten games. That distant victory, four defeats and five draws. A disaster.

"Lies as arguments"

Institutionally, chaos. The businesses of President José Castro, Vice President José María del Nido Carrasco and Counselor Carolina Alés, woke up last week with graffitied threats. In addition, the counselor experienced a kind of escrache after the Champions League match against PSV. A match that, by the way, was the team's farewell in the Champions League. The tension in the club's environment, in the run-up to Sevilla's ordinary shareholders' meeting, ended with a drumbeat of police controls and complaints by the three directors against Del Nido Benavente for threats, coercion, insults and incitement to hatred. Football does not flourish in a parched land.

Del Nido Benavente, upon his arrival at the General Shareholders' Meeting.EFE

At the Board, Junior announced the construction of a new stadium and salary relief for the first team. "It's difficult to work when you're constantly being tripped up, when lies are used as arguments, when you're being turned into a target, but that can't be an excuse to give up, quite the opposite. We have something that is there, which are the achievements, and that no one can argue with us even if some insist on ignoring them," said Pepe Castro. He was on his way to Del Nido Benavente, who tried to dynamite the assembly in vain.

With the accounts and the management knocked down in the vote, the club continues to cling to the curb so as not to drown. The battle for the actions, the stubbornness of Del Nido and the inconsistency of Castro, condemn Sevilla to make a pilgrimage for another season in the top flight of Spanish football. Without a plan for the future, without a competitive squad, without institutional stability, without leadership or strategy, the Sevillian club clings to chance and manhood. Grass sometimes serves to make up for what happens in offices. Although it doesn't seem like it in this course of troubled football and transparent coaches. Life goes on the same in Nervión. Wash underfoot. Unfathomable egos. And money. Money as a shadow that obscures everything.