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The Cádiz Chronicles with @Vam_os - Part 3 (16th August, 2017)

Welcome back! This is part 2 of a series on Cádiz by the founder of injuriesandmore.com, a website that focused on sports medicine and Spanish football. On Twitter, he is @Vam_os - go ahead and follow him!

This part is about talented youngsters and other signings, including rumors ...

Talented youngsters and other signings...

"Being Cádiz" means having pride in the local nature of the club and as such anyone who has a Cádiz connection - or former players like Chico Flores - will always come up in these discussions.

A couple of years ago it was Rafael van der Vaart who was being talked about as a potential summer signing due to the Spanish side of his family being Andalusian and the fact that he promised his grandfather in Chiclana that one day he would play for Cádiz; but that never happened either. There was huge excitement in Sevilla when he signed for Betis; but that move just didn’t work out and you can't help thinking that Rafaelito made the wrong decision at the time. Who knows what would have happened if had signed for Cádiz instead.

Álvaro Cervera has been active in the transfer window so far. He’s brought in several players including attacking midfielder Jesús Imaz from UCAM Murcia and two from Barça - Alberto Perea and Dani Romera. David Barral has also signed from Cypriot club APOEL Nicosia and could well turn out to be key player in the coming season.

David is local to the Cádiz area, having been born in San Fernando where he also played before going on to Real Madrid as a youngster. He spent six years in Asturias at Sporting Gijón after Madrid but as a player David is well traveled; having played at Levante, Fuenlabrada and Granada in Spain plus Orduspor in Turkey and Al Dafhra in the United Arab Emirates.

At the moment it looks as though Argentinean Marco Mauro will be Aridane's replacement in defense but Álvaro Cervera doesn't look quite finished yet with the market. Alongside Servando, the center of the defense should be solid enough.

Although there's talk about Álvaro signing Rubén Yáñez from Real Madrid as goalkeeper cover now that Jesús Fernández has moved to Cultural Leonesa, there's still a lot of speculation in and around the club with regards to potential movements; both in and out. Rubén didn’t travel to Skopje with Real Madrid for the Super Cup match against Manchester United so it’s looking as though a deal is likely.

We'll just need to wait and see what happens with regards to Salvi; as its been reported that among other, Real Betis are really keen to sign him. There was also earlier interest from Getafe; newly promoted to La Primera. To be honest, there will probably be others as well who will come in for Salvi before the transfer window ends. He’s steady, reliable, and it’s no surprise that Cádiz are a different team without him in the side.

Regarding players coming into the club, I think Álvaro Cervera is taking the right approach in bringing in loan players from the bigger clubs and personally I think this is good for Cádiz at the present time. La Liga 2 is ideal for players such as Dani Gómez, Óscar Rodríguez or Achraf Hakimi for example from Real Madrid. Zinedine Zidane took a lot of his youngsters to the USA for Madrid’s preseason and most of these played against Manchester United, City and Barça in the recent International Champions Cup.

Achraf in particular is being talked about in Madrid as being the natural cover for Dani Carvajal now that the Brazilian Danilo has moved to Manchester City. However, lads like Achraf aren’t tied to purely position-specific roles at this stage in their careers and would surely benefit from going out on loan to somewhere like Cádiz. Playing first-team football at the Ramón Carranza in a higher division would surely be far more beneficial for players like these as opposed to staying with Castilla in Segunda B. That said, there’s still a fair amount of time left in this window; but replacing someone like Aridane (and Salvi if he does go) is always going to be difficult.

The youth set-up at Cádiz continues to provide players who could step up a grade but you’re now looking at finding lads who can come straight into a La Liga 2 side as opposed to a Segunda B team; hence the emphasis on loan players at least in the interim. Additionally, anyone coming through from the youth or Cádiz B sides needs to step up at the right moment in order to progress their careers in a positive way. Football is notorious for building up the hopes of talented youngsters only to see them fail when they move to a higher level.

Watch out for part 4 - the last installment - tomorrow!

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