There’s some competition, but Pablo Mari is one of the strangest Manchester City signings in recent years.
Moving from Gimnastic in Spain’s Segunda Division, he was immediately loaned to FC Girona for a season.
That didn’t go entirely to plan and with the hope of more minutes elsewhere, Mari spent the next season at NAC Breda. There he got more games as a regular, but last summer he was set for somewhere else.
Deportivo La Coruna signed him on loan with an option to make the move permanent. Transfermarkt lists his contract as ending in June 2019, other sources have the end date as unknown.
The player himself suggests it goes beyond the end of this season, explaining he wants a permanent transfer sorting out.
Quoted by AS, the central defender said: “I hope that Deportivo and I will achieve our goals and that at the end of the season I will fix it with City and I can stay. I’m very happy and I think it’s time to settle in one place and be four or five years in a club. Be calm and defend with maximum pride saying ‘this is my team for many years’. A very important part of that will be to achieve promotion.”
Deportivo are currently second and looking well placed for a return to the big time, that would help Mari, now 25 years of age, get the stability he’s clearly looking for.
