Salute to a hero

Newcomers to the Champions League are obliged to spruce themselves up. Men from Uefa arrive at their stadiums, check the size of the corporate boxes, the space for outside broadcast units, the presentability of the arena. When they come to Sevilla, they find graffiti, miles of it. To walk around the Stadio Sanchez Pizjuan is to see no piece of unmarked white wall below the height a man might reach with a marker pen.

The messages number several thousand and are all dedicated to a 22-year-old footballer, Antonio Puerta, who lost his life following a cardiac arrest during Sevilla’s first match of the Spanish league season three weekends ago. Puerta was not the club’s most brilliant player, but he was good enough to have played for his country and so close to the heart of his club that his story until his death might have been dreamt up as a script to motivate every Andalucian schoolboy. Barely 500 yards from the stadium is the supporters’ bar founded by Puerta’s grandfather, where they keep the jersey Puerta wore on the night he scored the goal that took Sevilla to a Uefa Cup final. Elsewhere in the city, his partner carries their unborn child.

Tonight, Puerta’s teammates play for the first time at their home ground since his passing and the mourners will congregate in their tens of thousands. Tomorrow, a mass will be held in the cathedral in Puerta’s memory. No deadline can be set on the process of grieving and it is with some delicacy that those in charge of Sevilla address the business of moving on. Puerta had been part of a team with extraordinary momentum, a club that was in Spain’s second division when he was graduating from their youth sections six years ago, and who in the past 18 months collected two Uefa Cups, one Spanish Cup, Super Cups in Spain and Europe and who in June took their pursuit of a league title to the final evening of the domestic season. Puerta’s tragedy is now yoked to that story. “We all want to be able to dedicate more achievements to Antonio Puerta,” says the club president, Jose Maria del Nido, “and I see a group of players professional enough, and mentally strong enough, to continue being competitive so in some ways this can make us even stronger.”

Del Nido had been busy in the days ahead of the tragedy preserving Sevilla’s momentum in more mundane ways, bucking the trend that says every rapid riser in the game will succumb to the predators. In Sevilla’s case, the people eyeing up their assets came from London. Sustained interest from Chelsea in the Brazilian right-back Dani Alves created one of the transfer market’s more expensive auctions, with Del Nido holding out for an asking price close to £20m. Real Madrid joined the bidding, but Alves, against his vehemently expressed wishes, remains a Sevilla player, and now a participating one. He had briefly declined to join the squad in the aftermath of Chelsea’s withdrawal of interest.

Alves and his president are not on the best of terms, it can safely be reported. “It is bound to be hard to keep together a squad that has won everything that we have,” says Del Nido, rather pursed, “and there have been lots of clubs who want some of our people or players. We are strong enough financially, and strong enough as a team to keep these important figures and to keep finding more of them.”

Last week, the president introduced the club’s record signing ? at nearly £10m from PSV Eindhoven ? the Ivorian striker, Arouna Kone. Last month, he was fending off interest from Tottenham in the club’s head coach, Juande Ramos, after which Del Nido challenged him, announcing publicly that the coach had assured the president of his commitment until at least the end of the season. Like Dani Alves, Ramos remained, under improved terms, and will do for a long time, insists Del Nido. “He’s a fantastic coach, absolutely at the top level in Europe. He has a lot of ambition and that fits in with what we are looking for.” The president was anxious to add that the marriage of coach and club had been mutually beneficial. Ramos had worked at nine different Spanish clubs when Del Nido hired him in 2005, and at none of them had his reputation soared in the way it has at Sevilla. “He would say he hasn’t had this quality of squad before in his career,” says del Nido, “and the players have, of course, responded well to his way of working.” Ramos’s way of working is becoming better known. Arsène Wenger, whose Arsenal face Sevilla in Group H of the Champions League on Wednesday in London, renewed acquaintance with Ramos at a conference last week, and describes a man with “that ability to get the maximum out of a player. I’ve heard they work a lot psychologically and it looks to me that he has brought to Sevilla a rigorous type of play, very disciplined, and he’s brought in a very physical side as well.”

Wenger highlights the role of centre-forward Frederic Kanoute, once of Spurs and West Ham United and among the leading goalscorers in Spain last season. “Their game is based on Kanoute. They give it to him and the rest join in very quickly, like Alves and Jesus Navas on the right side. They also have a big squad.” Big enough for a heavy fixture load. Since Sevilla overwhelmed Middlesbrough in the final of the 2006 Uefa Cup, they have added strikers Kone and the Russian Alexander Kerzhakov; Italian goalkeeper Morgan de Sanctis; defenders Andreas Hinkel and Aquivaldo Mosquera, and midfielders Tom de Mul, and Seydou Keita, all internationals.

“What Sevilla have done very well recently is buy,” adds Wenger, “with the players from Brazil [Alves, Adriano, Renato and Luis Fabiano] and with Kanoute who has done very well.” Del Nido will take that asa compliment. He has done some good business with Arsenal with the lucrative sale of Jose Antonio Reyes three years ago. He intends to keep selling wisely and buying well. “We are going into the Champions League,” he says, “with the right amount of humility, but we want to establish a place among the big teams in Europe. I don’t think anybody will find us easy to play against.”