Having fired their coach on the eve of the Clausura 2013 professional soccer season, Chivas de Guadalajara have yet to win after five games played.
Last Sunday’s 1-1 tie with San Luis leaves Chivas in lowly 15th place in the 20-team table with just four points to their name.
Owner Jorge Vergara effectively undermined his side’s chances by dismissing Dutch coach John van’t Schip the day before the season began. This followed the firing of Dutch legend Johan Cruyff as club adviser on the last day of the Apertura 2012 season in December.“Chivas’ problem is its organization and its owner, Jorge Vergara,” said Cruyff, who is considered one of the greatest soccer players and coaches of all time, last month.
Vergara, the owner of Grupo Omnilife (a nutrition products company) who bought Chivas in 2002, also came in for stinging criticism from Todd Beane, the director of the Johan Cruyff Institute.
“Football people should decide football matters, not people who sell Omnilife products,” Beane told Medio Tiempo. “They say they brought us in to decide everything, but in the end (Vergara’s wife and Grupo Omnilife CEO) Angelica Fuentes decides … Fuentes and Vergara will have to answer for their behavior.”
After firing van’t Schip, Vergara named Benjamin Galindo as his successor. Galindo spent two spells at Chivas as a player and later returned to coach the side from 2000 to 2001. He won the Liga MX in last year’s Clausura 2012 as coach of Torreon side Santos Laguna.
Chivas’ local rivals Atlas are faring much better this season, having won three, tied one and lost one, but remain at greater risk of demotion to Mexico’s second division because of their poor points average over the last three years. Atlas have ten points to date, five more than Queretaro, whom they must remain above in order to avoid relegation.
Leones Negros, the University of Guadalajara (UdeG) team, could win promotion to the Liga MX top division, having won all five games so far this season. The Lions are first in the Ascenso MX, four points above second-placed Veracruz and ten points ahead of rivals Estudiantes Tecos from the Autonomous University of Guadalajara (AUG), who were recently bought by the world’s wealthiest man, Carlos Slim.