It was recently revealed that Marcelo Flores is essentially done at Oviedo. The team mentioned that they would leave it up to Arsenal, the club that owns Flores’s rights, if they wanted to keep him loaned to Oviedo for the rest of the season. Flores’ situation has been odd throughout his loan spell with the Spanish club. He started the season as a regular in the Oviedo lineup. Three games in though he got sent to the bench and from there he’s had trouble seeing the field.
Amidst this situation there were rumors swirling around which indicated that Grupo Pachuca intended to use their loan to get Flores to play in Mexico for this season. That would be either with Leon or Pachuca. That request was seemingly denied by Arsenal. Now, the higher ups at the club are saying that the ball is in Arsenal’s court to see what they want to do with the player. Even though they still have a loan out on him for the next 6 months. It seems like a situation very similar to the one Diego Lainez just went through.
Has Flores Played Poorly?
This is debatable, as we mentioned after the first three games he was benched and we didn’t see much of him. There was one point in the season where he came on and played only around 20 minutes. In that time span he was able to put in an assist for a goal. The team lost the match, but you’d think that his performance would put him in good standing with the coaches. That just wasn’t the case though.
After that performance he stayed on the bench for two full games. If we’ve learned anything from the Eric Ten Hag versus Cristiano Ronaldo situation it’s that coaches can be really weird people with egos of their own. Applied to this Flores situation he may not be in the good graces of the coach. We’ve seen that with Mexican players all over the map. Johan Vazquez was all but lost at Cremorense he gets a new coach, and starts immediately the next game. So it may be more of a personal issue with Flores. Who ironically, also recently got a new coach. Things haven’t improved too much for him though.
Grupo Pachuca Seems Petty In This Ordeal
There’s another issue for Flores that isn’t down to the coach. When Grupo Pachuca was essentially denied permission to bring Flores to Liga MX it seemed like things soured between Oviedo management and Arsenal. So Grupo Pachuca is trying to play the nice guy here saying that the ball is in Arsenal’s court. However, it does look like their plan all along was to bring Flores to Mexico and profit from the novelty of seeing the Mexican gem in Liga MX. Now that this possibility is off the table they’re not interested in Flores. It’s quite a terrible situation for literally a teen to be caught in the middle of.
Why Oviedo Under Pachuca Has Been A Failure
Number one the team is in quite the predicament in the table at this point. It’s really an issue if you end up being relegated from the second tier. Yes, you lose a lot of money when you go from LaLiga to the Liga Smart Bank. Relegation though to the third tier is like going from playing professionally to the amateur level. It’s a completely different game, and coming back from that is tough.
Part of the problems on the pitch stem from a lack of identity off it. Are you building a team to give youngsters a chance to play? Do you want to get this team to LaLiga? Grupo Pachuca does not seem to have a clear sense of what they want to do with the team. Which brings us to question why they bought the team in the first place!
