Santos Laguna bring back Gael Sandoval.

Gael Sandoval returns to Santos Laguna and they resign Guadalajaran native Joao Maleck.

After an unfortunate offseason for Santos Laguna with players testing positive for Covid-19 and Brian Lozano injuring his Tibia and Fibula, Santos Laguna was almost expected to make some moves, but some have been surprising.

Make moves Santos Laguna did, as they brought back former Santos player Gael Sandoval, he said in a statement when interviewed by TUDN “I was fortunate to return to the club that taught me so much and made me develop”. Santos also added players Ronaldo Prieto, Manu Balda, Ismael Govea,  Beto Ocejo, and resigned a Mexican forward that’s currently being held in a detention center in Joao Maleck.

Joao Maleck was a promising youth prospect that was out on loan from Santos Laguna to Porto B in 2018 and made his move to Spanish team Sevilla B in 2019. That same year he was in his Mexico and while driving he crashed into a couple named Maria Fernanda Peña and Alejandro Castro on the date of June 23, 2019, in the city Zapopan, Jalisco. Killing both and the prosecutors have reason to believe he was speeding and under the influence of alcohol. He has yet to be sentenced but faces up to 8 years for the charges pending against him.

After that move of reinforcing their hopeful future player in Joao Maleck, Santos agreed to bring back former rising star Gael Sandoval. Before Gael made his move to Chivas, he was almost assured to be the next big thing due to his play at Santos Laguna, but Chivas didn’t do much as far as helping him progress and his form has been getting worse and worse yearly.

It was bad enough for Alexis Vega was brought into the team while Chivas had had forwards as J.J Macias and Alan Pulido and due to that they pushing Vega out to the wing more it has given him less and fewer opportunities the more stacked this Chivas team gets after every preseason.

Not to mention 3 different coaches not knowing how to develop and just bad coaching from previous Chivas coaches as Tomas Boy and Jose Cardozo not having helped him. Due to these bad circumstances playing chances have been far in-between since Tomas Boy left Guadalajara after his short tenure. Gael joined Juarez in 2020 Clausura and managed 0 goals in 28 appearances for Juarez. He looks to make more of an impact on the team that helped him develop his skills and they will need all the firepower they can get this Apertura 2020.