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Eddie Chikamhi-Senior Sports Reporter
REAL Mallorca coach Javier Aguirre is pinning hopes on Zimbabwean forward Tino Kadewere to turn around the team’s poor fortunes in the Spanish La Liga.
Kadewere made history last Friday when he became the first football player from Zimbabwe to play in the Spanish La Liga, albeit in a 2-0 defeat to Getafe.
The lanky forward played a late second half cameo after he was introduced as an 84th minute substitute, replacing South Korean Lee Kang-in at Getafe’s Coliseum Alfonso Pérez.
Despite featuring a few minutes, his coach Javier Aguirre, who was blown away by Kadewere’s attitude after recovering from a serious quadriceps injury during the World Cup break, believes the Zimbabwean will give his goal-shy team joy once he gets in the groove.
“Well, Tino (Kadewere) had a serious injury. When he arrived, his parent club, the French team (Lyon), did not want him to have surgery, but he had a rather ugly private affair and he got ahead,” said Aguirre.
“He is a boy with very good character and today we put him in a 4-4-2 in a position that does not correspond to him, because he is a striker or play-maker. But the little he did I think was in line with the game, neither for better nor for worse.
“But I wait for him and he will give us things. I am very happy with his attitude, which is fundamental. The boy puts a lot of effort into it and he’s going to give us joy,” added the Mexican coach.
Mallorca’s major weakness this season has been their poor conversion rate. The side has scored a meagre 13 goals in 15 Spanish La Liga appearances.
This makes them the third worst team, in terms of goal scoring, in the 20-team league. They are only better than the two basement sides Elche and Cadiz who have scored 10 La Liga goals apiece this season.
Mallorca, however, are sitting in 11th place, with 19 points as Spanish giants Barcelona lead the race with 38 points from the same number of games.
But can Kadewere provide the answers that Aguirre so desperately wants in front of goal? Time will tell. The Zimbabwean scored six goals in six appearances during the recent FIFA World Cup break. Kadewere is likely to be thrown into the fray again tomorrow when Mallorca travel to third-tier side Pontevedra for the Copa del Rey round of 32 match.
Kadewere netted his first goal for Mallorca in the 6-1 win over Autol in the first round of the Copa del Rey in November.
The game marked his debut appearance for the club, after recovering from a quadriceps injury that he had suffered on arrival at the Spanish side last September.
He switched to Mallorca on a season’s loan deal from French Ligue 1 club Olympique Lyon.
Kadewere is looking to rediscover himself in Spain after enduring a frustrating second season at Lyon, where injuries and a crippling loss of form saw him starved of game time for most of last season.
Apparently, he failed to replicate the form he had when he arrived in France, where he had grabbed the Golden Boot in the French Ligue 2 with 20 goals from 24 outings for Le Herve.
His rise to the top-flight of French football was rapid as he was snapped up by Lyon in a lucrative deal worth an estimated US$16.5 million.
It did not take him long to settle in the Lyon set-up as he formed a formidable partnership with then captain Memphis Depay of the Netherlands and Cameroonian Karl Toko-Ekambi. Kadewere scored 10 goals in 33 outings in his debut season for Lyon during the 2020/21 season of the French topflight league.
But then he was dogged by injuries in his second season and at some point underwent corrective surgery to mend troublesome thigh muscles.
In his debut season for Lyon, Kadewere scored 10 goals but was not in the same form last season, starting less than five games and scoring only once in fifteen matches across all competitions, resulting in his loan move to Spain.
Online Reporter