Tenuous report claims Cazorla to Arsenal completed

As reported last night, Arsenal and Malaga midfielder Santi Cazorla appear to have mutual interest in the Spaniard coming to the Emirates this summer. The plot may just have advanced a bit.

Americas-based Spanish-language sports reporter Diego Balado, of Fox Sports and Univision, has just claimed on Twitter that Cazorla will leave Malaga for Arsenal. Typically a Twitter claim is spurious, but when actual sports reporters are the ones doing it, there's a bit more credibility. It guarantees nothing, but is interesting in the face of the reports from yesterday.

First of all, who's the reporter? Well, he's a real, live person, and this appears to be a legitimate account (nearly 90,000 followers, over 11,000 tweets) rather than one made recently to wind fans up. He's a football reporter and commentator for Fox Sports and Univision, as I mentioned above; those are fairly respectable outlets of reportage who, while they aren't perfect, are usually reliable.

What did he say? The tweet itself said:

Santi Cazorla deja al Málaga para sumarse al Arsenal inglés.

— Diego Balado (@DiegoBalado) July 24, 2012

which, of course, is Spanish, which we don't all speak fluently. Luckily the Internet does, so via Google Translate:

Santi Cazorla Malaga leaves to join the Arsenal.

That's pretty clear. Also, Google Translate calls us "the Arsenal," which is entirely awesome. As of this writing, the only tweet he's posted since is a lineup for Barcelona's friendly with HSV today, which I don't care about - but no retraction or qualification. Just "Santi Cazorla Malaga leaves to join the Arsenal."

So where do we go from here? At the moment, don't go too far. This is an interesting mini-development, and it looks like things have advanced slightly from last night. Balado seems like someone who knows what he's doing - he has a reputation, and it seems unlikely that he would just make this up. On the other hand, he could have a lame source, so this is by no means a guarantee. Stick with The Short Fuse Transfer Guarantee: "Until it's on the dot-com, it's not real." But it may be a bit closer to meeting that criterion.