Baena Bids Adieu
Grilled Birds fan favourite
Enrique Baena would move on after five fruitful seasons at the club, in which he had won the Young Player of the Season award in Season 82. Passionate to a fault, Baena had grown from an angry teenager to a much more controlled wing operator in that time, if still with flashes of the wildness that had made him such a controversial crowd-puller in his earlier years.
There was, however, no realistic prospect of him overhauling
Brian Reddy in his favourite role for some years, and given that reality, a transfer out was his only route to becoming a regular soon. The 22 year-old will thus leave with 61 appearances and 14 goals, and a bunch of happy memories.
And he could hardly hope for a better destination than Finnish II.1 favourites FC Kyou, who had just won the Mestaruussarja just over a season ago, to make it nine major national trophies in their cabinet. Frenchman Florient Loriot will provide competition, but for Baena, the S$2.44 million move ticked all the boxes. "I can still hardly believe it." he managed.
It was an easy choice to pick FC Kyou over French H.A.L VI.736 side Barakagap, with vacceo2.0 (Spanish Division Six), Pörköltszaft Fc (Hungarian Division Six) and FC-=Barca=- (Dutch Division Five) also not proferring too much of an attraction. Spanish IV.13 former Copa Zafiro winners Los leones huevones did perk Baena's interest for a time, but that was before FC Kyou came in.
"We're all chuffed for him back here." Grilled Birds head coach
Tian Yonghang smiled. "I would not have minded keeping him on myself, but with Reddy now, his minutes would be severely reduced. FC Kyou are undeniably in a better position than us at the moment, however, and Baena has earned it!"