The dangers of Piqué’s Andorra for FC Cartagena
Next Sunday (14.00) faces the soccer Club Cartagena to an Andorra that is surprising the entire Second Division scene with its football. In their debut season in LaLiga Smartbank, Eder Sarabia’s men have already slipped into the top six on two occasions, not an easy feat considering the great teams fighting for the same goal. Their victory in Ibiza on the last day returned them to the promotion positions, following closely in the footsteps of Cartagena just before their direct confrontation. In the National Stadium of Andorra, two contenders for the play off will be measured to discern who is still in the fight and who is left behind.
Andorra’s is an exceptional case and not without controversy. In just four years, the tricolor team has gone from regional categories to Second in a meteorological rise through the divisions of Spanish football. In 2018, the team played in group 2 of the Catalan Primera and in 2019 it rose two categories at the same time after winning a place in the Third Division on the field and later buying the place of the extinct Reus in Second B. All of this had the support of the ex-soccer player FC Cartagena Gerard Piqué, who injected, according to El Confidencial, 3.5 million euros into the club after reaching agreements with the RFEF to market the Spanish Super Cup in Saudi Arabia.
Apart from extra-sports controversies, the truth is that Andorra is having a great football campaign and, curiously, the team that is playing for Eder Sarabia has many aspects in common with Luis Carrión’s Cartagena. It will not be difficult for the coaches to discover the opponent’s threats in their weekly study, since the two squads have important similarities.
The first of them is in his style of play and is that While Andorra is the team with the best ball possession data in the entire LaLiga Smartbank, Cartagena is not far behind. Eder Sarabia’s men maintain a spectacular average of 66 percent ball possession per game, surpassing the other 21 Second Division teams. For its part, Cartagena drops that figure to 55.4 percent, which places it as the third best ball possessor in the category.
His preference for maintaining possession has led the two teams to sign similar goalscoring numbers. The Albinegros have scored 22 goals and have conceded 17 while the Pyrenees are less scorers, but also fewer goals. The Andorran team has 20 goals in favor and only 13 against in the seventeen days played so far and proposes a fort in their stadium that will not be easy for the Cartagenerista forward since in the Andorra National Stadium they have only received the tricolor four goals in eight games.
Precisely the forward is the next point of similarity between the two teams since the two teams are enjoying the sweet moment of their attacking duo. If on one side we have Armando Sadiku fighting for the top scorer with 7 goals, Sinan Bakis follows in his footsteps with the same goals although Carlos Martínez, with 4, does not reach Ortuño’s 6. On the other hand, the tricolors have their goals more distributed than the albinegros since up to eleven footballers have scored for Cartagena’s nine.
All this has led the two teams to the playoff positions with 8 wins each and only one point difference, the one that Cartagena has with one more tie and one loss less than its rival this Sunday. The situation generates a high-tension match in Andorra la Vella that will have to face FC Cartagena.
Jairo: “We know that promotion is complicated, but we dream of it”
The footballer of FC Cartagena, Jairo Izquierdo, spoke to the club’s media after yesterday’s morning training to convey his feelings about the last game and about his state of form. The winger recorded the clash against Eibar as vital to recover the good feelings. “It was a game that we wanted to win because we came from a chain of games without victories and on top of that it was a direct rival that fights with us and it was an adrenaline rush,” he said. The man from Tenerife knows the importance of not getting out of bad dynamics since it is something that Luis Carrión constantly repeats. «The coach stresses a lot the importance of not losing two games in a row and we fight for that. The team has always competed and that is praiseworthy,” Jairo acknowledged. The opportunity to reach the play off is still there and the player does not hide the illusion of him. «The players dream of being as high as possible and of winning as much as possible. We know that promotion is complicated because there are very good teams, but we dream of it and we have it in mind,” he reiterated. Finally, Jairo admitted his good form despite being tired and revealed how he maintains his level. “I’m good. With the training I measure the demand and in the matches the discomfort goes away. I hope it lasts like this, “concluded the player.