Monchi is off, and four days early. It's Thursday afternoon and his work here is done, or at least he hopes it is. This, after all, is the man who the club captain Ivan Rakitic says is "on twenty-four hours a day, as if this was his family." And so, although he should know better really, Sevilla's sporting director grins at the screen. "I want to go on holiday as soon as this call is over so if there here are no signings while we're talking, it's finished," he says, laughing. "Look, you never know: for as long as it's open, anything can happen. But our idea is that the market is over."
And with that, it ends. And something else starts, something bigger. Bigger, maybe, than anything any of them can remember.
The market has been busier for Sevilla than usual; it's been busier for Sevilla than most others, too. For all the noise around many clubs -- noise that will continue until midnight on Monday, when the January window closes -- not many clubs have got as much done as they have, and nor will they. None have declared their dealings done before the deadline. Oscar and Oussama Idrissi have left. "Jesus "Tecatito" Corona arrived. And then Anthony Martial arrived from Manchester United, welcomed by his boyhood idol (original) Ronaldo, suddenly appearing on the giant screen at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan.
"Maybe for the past few years, he hasn't been able to enjoy himself much with Manchester United; hopefully he can enjoy that with us," Rakitic said the following day. "It is really important to have someone like him; not to put pressure on but if we can enjoy having a player like him, he can be important for us."
He already had been, in fact. So Rakitic reckons. "We know about the strength of the Premier League and it's a dream for a lot of players [to go there], but Sevilla have grown, and that [growth] is seen in Martial joining us," the Croatian midfielder insisted. "For Diego Carlos and others this is a big opportunity to see Martial come here. Players don't need to leave to be at a big club. They're at a big club already. This is a club that can compete for everything."
And maybe that was the thing.
Maybe? Emotionally, certainly. It wasn't so much what had happened that was so striking, the focus of conversation during a conference call with Sevilla set up by LaLiga yesterday. It was what had not happened, what now would not happen. It was that even the signing of Martial -- a player that Monchi had followed for years, the striker that they hope can give them the goals they have sometimes lacked, that step up in quality, that name even -- ending up being framed as much as a way of keeping a player as getting one.
It was precisely that Monchi declared the window closed. With Diego Carlos still a member of Sevilla's first-team squad. Just as the summer window had closed with Jules Kounde still there.
"Seven or eight years ago, that wouldn't have happened," Rakitic admitted. Seven or eight months ago, it might not have happened either, not in the case of Diego Carlos. Newcastle had come with money and intent. He had his head turned. It was a lot of money, for him and for the club. "The offer was very important," in Monchi's words, but also "insufficient." And so Sevilla said no. Definitively. There are four days left in the window, but there is no more dealing to be done. The only way Newcastle could sign him now is to unilaterally pay his buy-out clause of €70m, which no-one is anticipating.
"The last call was three days ago, and we judged the negotiation to be closed and over. I don't foresee it reopening," Monchi said.
