The best in the world

THE BEST IN THE WORLD

 

Valencia players celebrating the hisorical doublé

 

The 2002/2003 season has just wrapped up and Valencia is immersed in a similar crisis as that of 2001. Probable sale of stars, an awful previous season that only permitted the squad to play the UEFA Cup, loss of hope by fans, etc.

The fact that Valencia missed a Champions League spot caused that the club would have even bigger economical problems. The only way out to balance the accounts was to sell the best players, which wasn’t well received by supporters. In Barcelona, in the middle of a political campaign, there was the rumor that Txiki Begiristain, Barça sports director appointed by the recently elected president Joan Laporta, wanted to sign the “triple A” from Valencia (Aimar, Ayala and Albelda), apart from the interest they also had to sign Baraja and Vicente; Real Madrid were insistent to sign Ayala; Italian clubs wanted to sign Cañizares and finally, Kily González was in the middle of transfer rumors, for a change.

Furthermore, Valencia had just had an electoral period in which the two contenders (Paco Roig and Bautista Soler) had promised new signings; the winner was builder Soler and, as the summer went by, supporters were expecting new stars but they didn’t come. Valencia wanted the return of former Valencia player and then at Lazio Claudio López using the debt that the Italians had with the club for the Mendieta’s deal two years before but the Italians refused to trade the Argentinean, considered as a key asset for the Rome-based club. On the other hand, Soler took charge personally of the negotiations with Mallorca to sign Samuel Eto’o, with the consent of coach Rafa Benítez, who was losing his patience with the board due to the lack of signings.

 

Claudio López and Eto'o, Valencia targets in the summer of 2003

 

While on the subject, the preseason started and Valencia began to show defensive strength again after the disappointing end of the previous season, recovering the attitude lost in the previous months. A win at Anfield against Liverpool and a great game at Mestalla against Real Madrid (only lost on penalties) seemed to confirm that they were achieving the perfect shape to face the 2003/2004 season. Besides, Rafa Benítez himself said in a press conference that he saw his players with a similar attitude and commitment as that from two years before, when Valencia was crowned La Liga champions 31 years later.

But the social atmosphere was troublesome. Jaume Ortí, who was still the president despite the electoral result, had to bear a huge booing from Valencia fans in the team’s presentation at Mestalla. An embarrassing moment for a man who didn’t have voice or vote despite his position, but whose big mistake was to promise first class players to the fans.

In those years, during the team’s presentation before the fans, there used to be a speech by the president, the coach and the captain. Benítez and Albelda (named captain in that summer over previous leader Cañizares) were acclaimed but when it came to the president, the whistles took over Mestalla in a terrible way. That was the last year that speeches were made in the presentation. After promising great signings in order to inspire hope in the supporters, the club, overnight, signed two unknown players: Uruguayan Fabián Canobbio, from Peñarol Montevideo, and Brazilian Ricardo Oliveira, from Santos.

Oliveira and Canobbio

This two signings annoyed the coach, who stated that he had only seen these players in a couple of videos and confirmed that he didn’t know anything about the fact that the club was in negotiations to sign them. He also said that he didn’t need any players for the positions they occupied (the Uruguayan was a left winger who was more a hard-worker than a quality player while the Brazilian had just been the top scorer in his home country and would turn up to be a top player in the future) and said to the media the famous sentence “I was expecting a sofa and they brought me a lamp”. The boss’ relationship with the then sports director García Pitarch wasn’t good either, which made the situation even worse. The coach said that he needed a right winger and, to please him, the club signed Jorge López, from Villarreal, a consensus signing, although he wouldn’t be able to play the UEFA Cup since he had played the Intertoto Cup with his previous club that summer.

But all the problems hadn’t been solved. The indisputable star of Valencia’s defense, Fabián Ayala, didn’t want to continue at the club and wanted to be traded to Real Madrid. Valencia, at the beginning, was adamant and didn’t want to sell him, saying that the Argentinean would only leave if Real Madrid paid his buyout clause. The merengues had a preferential option over his former player Samuel Eto’o, to which they were eager to give up in order to sign Ayala; Real offered 9 million plus that option so that Valencia could freely negotiate with Mallorca so as to sign the Cameroonian. Valencia lacked efficient strikers after the disastrous previous season, in which the top scorers had been midfielders. Real Madrid knew about that and wanted to take advantage of that situation. But Valencia’s board, afraid of the reaction of the fans if the player was sold, refused the proposal. That’s why Florentino Pérez, Real Madrid’s president, used his usual method when he wanted to sign a player, that is, he demanded the player to ask Valencia to leave and to refuse to play for the club ever again. The Argentinean accepted and he didn’t play the first games of La Liga, so Valencia had to study the proposal again, with the chance to sign Boca Juniors’ Burdisso in case Ayala left. But they finally refused and, after a month of negotiations, Ayala decided to sign a four-year extension contract with Valencia. A wise choice after all that would happen at the end of the season.

 

Roberto Fabián Ayala

Rafa Benítez wanted Ayala to stay but he also needed an attacking player. And to make things worse, the night before the end of the transfer window, Valencia loaned Salva Ballesta to Málaga and John Carew to Roma and Juan Sánchez had been close to leaving and wasn’t traded because there wasn’t very much time left. That meant that the number of forwards was limited. In the previous days, Kily González had been sold to Internazionale, after hard negotiations in which Valencia accepted to pay the Argentinean a great deal of what was left of his four-year contract, a ruinous operation since Valencia had turned down a 15 million bid by Barcelona in the summer of 2002 because the board feared the fans’ reaction for selling such a beloved player. The coach finally showed his annoyance and, in a press conference and given the lack of signings, said that he would try to take the most out of his players that he had been left with, and that his only concern would be no more than that. Benítez, despite being happy at the city and with the supporters’ affection, was getting more irritated with the board and that would give way to his departure at the end of the season.

Fortunately, the team’s shape was excellent at the beginning of the season. Valencia was leading the standings of La Liga in September, playing great games, and had won the first round of the UEFA Cup, defeating Swedish AIK Solna without any problem. And there was an important fact: Valencia had finally found an attacking reference, since Mista seemed to be touched by a magic wand and was showing a scoring capacity that he hadn’t shown in the previous years. The sports director, García Pitarch, had tried to trade him to Sevilla for a 4 million fee in the summer, but the Murcia-born player had refused since he wanted to show his quality in Valencia. And he was doing it. Besides, the team beat galácticos Real Madrid at Mestalla and at Camp Nou against Rijkaard and Ronaldinho’s Barcelona. Valencia also defeated Castellón in the first round of Copa del Rey in a surreal game, in which the referee was attacked by the local fans with a lighter after blowing a penalty kick for Valencia, with the game tied, having to call the game off; the game was resumed a few days later and, after days of doubt on who would shoot the penalty kick (everyone expected it would be specialist Baraja), the shooter was Mista, who missed, but whose rejection was seized by Baraja, scoring a goal that would precede another one scored by Canobbio. Valencia qualified for the following round.

Bad results came with the cold weather. Defeats at Riazor, at Mestalla against Racing, draws at La Condomina, Anoeta and at Mestalla against Celta and a disappointing draw in the first leg of the second round of UEFA Cup at Mestalla against weak Israelites Maccabi Haifa provoked that Valencia lost positions in the standings and also jeopardized the team’s participation in the UEFA Cup. Luckily, Valencia won the away game with a convincing 0-4 in a half-empty stadium, since the game was played at Eneco Stadion in Rotterdam (Sparta’s stadium). UEFA had decided that no games should be played at Israeli soil due to the warlike situation of the Hebrew country. 

With the beginning of 2004, Valencia recovered the shape and started winning games with authority, qualifying for the quarterfinals of Copa del Rey after defeating Murcia and Osasuna. Rafa Benítez’s rotation system was working and the team was showing a fantastic physical condition. When substitutes like Xisco, Canobbio, Oliveira, Sissoko, Garrido or David Navarro played, the team didn’t notice it.

The team was working well until February, when the yearly scandal at the Santiago Bernabeu took place one more time. In January, Valencia had been knocked out in Copa del Rey against Real Madrid with a questionable performance by the referee since the team deserved a better result. But what happened in February was even more outrageous. Valencia was leading the game with a goal scored by Ayala, who gave an advantage to the team, apart from playing way better than Real. But in injury time, after a long shot from the midfield by a Real Madrid player that arrived to Valencia’s area, Raúl rested his body on Marchena and flopped shamelessly. The referee bit the bait and whistled a penalty. Figo scored and the game finished with a draw. The scandal was such that all Spanish football talked about that action, aware of the robbery suffered by Valencia. To make things worse, the president of the referee committee, Sánchez Arminio, defended the referee’s performance and even worse, the director of the committee, former referee Díaz Vega, supposedly a partial figure, criticized Valencia and its fans for the complaints. The credibility of the referee establishment was at its lowest.

 

That fact created a nervous background in the players and the team went downhill in the following games, losing against Barcelona at home and at Montjuïc against Espanyol, being eight points away from the leader, Real Madrid itself. But the recovery didn’t take very long, winning two difficult UEFA Cup rounds against Turkish sides Besiktas and Gençlerbirligi, the latter after losing in Turkey on March 11th, the day Spain suffered a terrorist attack, in Madrid. The team scored a silver goal at the home game and won the tie. In La Liga, Valencia took the control over their own performances and started adding wins to their collection, with an extraordinary form shown by Vicente and Mista, the first being the best left winger in Europe and the latter showing an endless scoring ability, scoring 24 goals in all competitions.

In April, the leader was just a few points away and also, Valencia was in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Cup, which was starting to be considered as a great chance to lift a trophy. The opponent would be tough, Girondins Bordeaux, but the team played a great game in France and got the win, culminating the tie in Mestalla. Valencia was excited about the fact that the team was in the semifinals, because the team had never lost a European semifinal in the history of the club (Champions League, UEFA Cup and extinct UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup). The opponent would be neighbors Villarreal. At the same time, Valencia cut back the eight-point distance with the leader and recovered the first position in the standings with a fantastic win at Zaragoza, which will be remembered by fans as the game in which president Jaume Ortí, put an orange wig on, celebrating the shape of the team. The president was now respected. 

Jaume Ortí wearing his orange wig

The Madrid-based media was starting to be afraid of losing a league that they thought they would easily win. Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, had decided in the previous season to fire two icons of the club: coach Vicente del Bosque and captain Fernando Hierro. In his opinion, they weren’t high-profile personalities and to replace them, Pérez signed Portuguese coach Carlos Queiroz, who was at the time Sir Alex Ferguson’s assistant coach at Manchester United. He also bet for a policy called “Zidanes y Pavones”, based on the combination of the best and most expensive players of the world and young players. Besides, he signed David Beckham, who sold more shirts than quality. The bet backfired and, as the media was shamefully controlled by Florentino Pérez, in April, in order to justify his decision, they tried to cause instability in Valencia via other teams; the media encouraged Deportivo to lose on purpose against Real Madrid, reminding them of the penalty kick missed by Djukic against Valencia in 1994 that caused Deportivo losing a Liga that they thought they would easily win. Florentino Pérez realized that his project was in its way to become a failure, losing in the Copa del Rey final against Zaragoza and being knocked out in the Champions League quarterfinals against Monaco. Deportivo didn’t frighten off by the pressure and won their game against Real. 

In May, Valencia got an essential triumph in their fight to win La Liga at Mestalla against Betis. A few days later, Valencia had to face the second leg of the UEFA Cup semifinals against Villarreal; after a scoreless draw in the the first leg at El Madrigal despite the multiple chances wasted by Valencia players, the second leg was expected to be a tough one, and so it was. In the 15th, Belletti committed a silly and unnecessary penalty on Mista, who took the responsibility to shoot it against goalkeeper Reina; he didn’t fail. Valencia suffered until the end of the game but, at the end, they grabbed the win and would have to face French Olympique Marseille in the final, that had just defeated Newcastle in the semifinals. 

Three days after the team’s qualification for the UEFA Cup final, Valencia had to face an important weekend in order to win La Liga. They played against Sevilla, but the team depended on Real Madrid and Barcelona in their games on Saturday; in order of this to happen, Real would have to lose at home against Mallorca and Barcelona would have to suffer a loss at Balaídos against Celta, too. And it happened. Both teams lost their games (especially remarkable that of the Santiago Bernabeu, with an extra-motivated Samuel Eto’o, a former Real Madrid player). So, if Valencia won on Sunday at Sevilla, they would be proclaimed as the new champions of the competition, just two years after winning the previous one.

Surprisingly, Rafa Benítez kept using his rotation system in the most important game of the season. In the starting XI, the coach included reserves Oliveira, Sissoko, Xisco and Jorge López, benching starters Baraja, Angulo and Aimar. The Madrid-born coach knew that there were two more games left in La Liga and also a UEFA Cup final. But the team didn’t notice those changes; they were a bulldozer and had no problems to win the game, 0-2, with goals scored by Vicente and Baraja. Valencia were crowned champions for the sixth time in history.

 

But the best was still yet to come. Ten days later, at the Üllevi Stadium in Göteborg, Sweden, Valencia would play Olympique Marseille in the UEFA Cup final. The ghosts from the two Champions League finals lost in 2000 and 2001 stalked the team. Besides, the French team had in their roster two of the greatest players of the decade: World and European champion with France, goalkeeper Fabien Barthez, and the Ivorian powerful striker Didier Drogba. Valencia started the game doubtful and missing many chances but the French weren’t causing many problems since Drogba was intimidated by Ayala from the very beginning of the game, but the team was showing problems in the attack. But finally, there was an action that changed the rest of the game. Almost at half time’s injury time, Mista managed to have a clear chance, alone against Barthez; when he was about to dribble him, the French goalkeeper made a clear penalty. He was sent off and Vicente scored the penalty. It was a psychological goal that affected Marseille in the second half; playing with ten men against a dominating Valencia, the only thing that the French team could do was to witness the exhibition of Rafa Benítez’s men. In the 57th minute, Mista finished off the game, the team getting their own back after those Champions League final losses; captains Albelda and Baraja lifted the UEFA Cup trophy. After a troublesome beginning of the season, Valencia ended it with a historic double.

The players were received by a passionate city. Even so, the club had always been in the middle of internal problems and even though these successes hid those problems, they were still there. The managing director Manuel Llorente and the sports director, Suso García Pitarch, had been inexplicably considering the possibility of signing a new coach for the following season. They contacted Atlético’s Gregorio Manzano and Albacete’s César Ferrando, respectively. When Rafa Benítez knew about this, he demanded an apology and a new contract, given his work and results despite the problems he had found during his three-year tenure at Mestalla. Manuel Llorente answered that he would offer a new contract to him and his staff but it would be a downward contract since, according to him, “if you lose three games in a row, I will have to fire you”. He tried Benítez’s patience so hard that, in the previous days of the historic game at Sevilla where Valencia would win La Liga, the coach decided to leave the club at the end of the season even though his contract expired a year later. He had received offers from Turkey but he hadn’t shown any interest; but then Liverpool showed up and offered him a 5-year contract and decision-making freedom to sign, sell and extend contracts. He couldn’t turn it down and decided to head to Anfield.

The club’s owner, Bautista Soler, tried to convince him to stay at Valencia, aware that the fans could get very angry with the board; he even offered a similar contract as that of Liverpool but the decision was made. Once the season ended, with a touching press conference that he couldn’t finish due to his tears, Rafa Benítez said goodbye to Valencia, leaving a champion team that, at the end of the year 2004, would be named as the best in the world.

Manuel Llorente would desperately travel a few days later to London to sign former Valencia coach Claudio Ranieri, who had been recently fired by Chelsea. He was offered the same contract that Llorente had refused to offer to Benítez, demonstrating the bad relationship they had, despite being good friends a few years before. It was a sad ending to the best season of Valencia’s history that would provoke a great depression in the years to come, in the team and also in fans, while Rafa Benítez lifted the Champions League trophy one year later.

Rafa Benítez lifting the Champions League trophy in 2005 with Liverpool

 

Transition and conformism

TRANSITION AND CONFORMISM

 

Vicente and Carboni protesting a decisión by the referee in the Valencia-Internazionale game

“It’s the other teams that have to improve, not us”. Valencia has just won 2001/2002 La Liga and, nevertheless, the economical situation of the club is frail. The coach, Rafa Benítez, knows that he has squeezed his roster as hard as he could in order to win the championship, defeating Real Madrid’s “galácticos”, as well as beating powerful Deportivo, a strong team in the beginning of the century. Therefore, the Madrid-born boss needed new players who could improve the roster in order to increase competitiveness and to replace probable sales given the interest of powerful clubs for Valencia stars. The president’s answer, privately and publicly, was categorical: “it’s the other teams that have to improve, not us, we are the reigning champions”. Arrogance in a pure state by Jaume Ortí.

 

Jaume Ortí, Valencia's president at the time

 Valencia needed specific players, especially a right back and a forward, after the departures of Angloma and Adrian Ilie. Valencia spent the summer considering the signing of Ángel, Las Palmas’ right back, a player with a bright future who had just been relegated to the Second Division with his team. He’d eventually sign for Celta de Vigo, where he would get called up to play for Spain, before playing for Villarreal, Betis and back to Las Palmas. For the forward position, the target was Albert Luque, from Mallorca, where he played two outstanding seasons that allowed him to be part of the Spanish squad in the World Cup held in South Korea and Japan, but his price was too high and he ended up signing for Deportivo.

So, Rafa Benítez didn’t get the signings he needed and Jaume Ortí, Valencia’s president at the time, outlined the sentence that this article begins with, trying to leave out the fact that Valencia didn’t have the money required to sign competitive players.

The coach, despite the great quality of his players, feared that his footballers, after the great effort made in the previous season to win La Liga, could lose their intensity and ease off, taking into account Valencia’s comeback to the Champions League.

And it seems that his concerns made sense after the first month of the season. The team lost with fuss the Spanish Supercup to Deportivo and, in the practice prior to the opening La Liga game, Rafa Benítez decided to call it off ten minutes after the beginning because he saw that his players were showing no intensity, since they didn’t feel like running and were making jokes during the training session.

Fortunately, the beginning of La Liga and the Champions League was exciting, showing a similar level as the previous year, thanks to a solid defensive system and also to John Carew’s goals. The team was leading the standings at the end of September.

But, from then on, Valencia started to suffer an alarming lack of goals, aggravated by the fact that the players were unable to score from the penalty spot; in fact, there was a moment in which, when a penalty was awarded to Valencia, it seemed a punishment to the players, feeling insecure when they had to shoot it. Even a specialist like Rubén Baraja missed two penalties in one single game at home against Celta.

In the Champions League, the situation was more positive. The group the team had to play in was easy, with Liverpool, Spartak Moscow and Basel. Valencia easily led the group but in the second group stage, the team would have to play against terrible opponents. An invincible Arsenal led by Henry, Vieira, Pires or Bergkamp; powerful Roma with Totti, Cafú and Cassano and last but not least, a young Ajax coached by Ronald Koeman that had stars-to-be Ibrahimovic and Van der Vaart besides veterans like Litmanen.

There was a fact in November that made Rafa Benitez’s relationship with the board more difficult. Javier Subirats, the sports director and the man who had bet for the coach a year before, was replaced by another former player of Valencia, Jesús García Pitarch, with whom Benítez would have many ups and downs. Even so, Benítez signed a two year extension, a deal previously agreed with Subirats.

Suso García Pitarch and Rafa Benítez

In December, the club wasn’t very far from the top positions in the standings, surprisingly led by Real Sociedad, that had stars like Nihat, Kovacevic and Xabi Alonso. But the lack of goals was worrying. The team created many chances but players failed when it came to finish the plays. A good example of that was the first game of the Champions League round of 16 at Mestalla against Ajax. Valencia had more than ten clear chances, missing all of them, and in the 87th minute, Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored in the only chance that the Dutch had in the whole game. Fortunately, in the injury time, Angulo scored the tying goal. Besides the difficulty the team had to score, as the season went by, Valencia started to falter defensively, just the part of the game in which Valencia was one of the strongest teams in the world. At half-season, Valencia started to concede set-piece goals due to their lack of defensive intensity that Rafa Benítez feared that the team could lose at the beginning of the season.

The team’s participation in the Copa del Rey finished before people expected that season. With the one-legged round rule at the weakest team’s home, the team beat Nàstic de Tarragona on penalties but lost in the same way at Alicante, a team playing in the third category of Spanish football. It was a similar failure as those from previous seasons against Osasuna, Guadix or Novelda.

On the other hand, the season couldn’t miss the yearly scandal at Santiago Bernabeu. Still hurt for losing La Liga in the year of Real Madrid’s centenary, “los merengues” started to orchestrate media pressures against Valencia in order to disorient them and avoid obstacles in their path to win the competition in a period of time in which their main enemy, Barcelona, was underperforming. With 1-1 in the scoreboard in a game in which Valencia was playing fantastically, Real Madrid’s right back Míchel Salgado, simulated an aggression by Pablo Aimar; the referee bit the bait and the Argentinean was sent off. Aimar, a player who was unable to hurt anybody, left the pitch astounded. Valencia lost their focus and ended up losing the game 4-1, playing with ten men for more than half an hour.

 

Aimar being sent off at the Santiago Bernabeu

In the winter transfer window, Valencia finally improved the roster, since the only right back of the team, Curro Torres, picked up a serious knee injury. Benítez showed that he was right when he spent the previous summer asking for a right back. The player that the sports direction chose was French Anthony Réveillère, from Rennes. Valencia didn’t have a powerful economical capacity, so he signed the player on loan, with an option to sign him permanently at the end of the season, an option that the club wouldn’t execute despite his good performances, playing every single game from January to the end of the season. After his brief spell in Valencia, Réveillère played ten seasons for Olympique Lyonnais as an undisputed starter, winning many trophies and being a member of the French national team in a World Cup and also in a European Championship.

Anthony Réveillère presented as new Valencia player

From the beginning of the second half of the competition, Valencia crumbled. The schedule was demanding (this season was the last in which the Champions League round of 16 would be displayed as a six-game league, in order to give some rest to the players) and the offensive ability of the players was concerning, only saved by acceptable statistics by Carew, Aimar and a surprising Fabio Aurelio. That meant that the team had real difficulties to win their games.

In the Champions League round of 16, Valencia qualified in one of the most even groups of the competition’s history; the team qualified first in the group after a magic night, the day of the “cremà” of the Fallas (the main feast of the city in which monuments made of carton, wood and cork are burnt on March 19th every year). The team beat powerful Arsenal 2-1, recalling the win achieved two years before that allowed Valencia to qualify for the 2001 Champions League semifinals. Besides, the executioner of the win was the same as the one two years earlier: Norwegian John Carew. Valencia suffered since Arsenal possessed the most powerful attacking system in Europe but the team played at their top, mainly defensively, and the Norwegian giant didn’t miss his target again. In the quarterfinals Héctor Cúper’s Internazionale would be Valencia’s opponent; another hard nut with Zanetti, Materazzi, Crespo and Vieri among others.

 

The relationship between Rafa Benítez and his players was starting to deteriorate as the final months came by. The coach knew that, if they wanted to compete against the best, he would have to squeeze his players and make them perform even beyond their abilities. The players felt too demanded, so some of them complained due to the exhaustion it caused to them. That’s why, in the press conference prior to the second leg game against Internazionale, the coach publicly blamed his players for their bad attitude in order to motivate them. Benítez criticized them because he felt the players lacked attitude and hunger, questioning their efforts and ending up his speech with the famous sentence “it’s only two months left to bear ourselves”, meaning that, even though the players clashed with him, they had to make the last effort in the two final months of the season and later, at the end, everyone would make their own decisions. It was also a message to the board, showing them that the lack of signings was having an effect on the results and the level of the team. He said all this before the astonished journalists, who didn’t expect those words. Valencia had just lost at San Siro in the first leg 1-0 and it was essential that the players showed all their skills, accompanied by the fans, who never abandoned the team.

In the second leg of the quarterfinals, Valencia played fantastically, even though the team conceded an early goal by Vieri. The hero of the game, as in the previous year’s confrontation between the two teams in the UEFA Cup, was goalkeeper Francesco Toldo, who saved all the multiple chances created by Valencia.  The players showed again their difficulty to score and, even so, they got back in the scoreboard 2-1, with goals by Aimar and Baraja. Valencia kept besieging the Italians’ goal and, in the last minutes, the Italian defense Adani made a clear penalty to Juan Sánchez, but the Danish referee Milton Nielsen didn’t see it or didn’t want to see it. Valencia got knocked out and there would be no trophies that year since Valencia, little by little, had fallen back from the top positions in La Liga, in which Real Madrid and Real Sociedad were fighting to win it.

 

After this disappointment, Valencia went downhill. Celta de Vigo and Deportivo had a fantastic end of the season and were a threat for Valencia in their fight to achieve a Champions League spot. The schedule would be very tough, having to face difficult teams such as Deportivo, Real Madrid, Real Sociedad and Barcelona. Precisely against the Catalans, Valencia lost their options in a game remembered by the Mendieta’s celebration after a scoring a goal from the penalty kick, a gesture that Mestalla never understood. Valencia would have to find consolation with their participation in the following season’s UEFA Cup, although history says that it ended up being a gift.

At the end, Rafa Benítez was right: Valencia needed new players in order for the roster to maintain their commitment and attitude to play at the same level that had allowed them to win the previous La Liga. The team finally showed that conformism that the coach was so afraid of in the beginning of a season that can be considered as a transition year, after the success of the previous season and the achievements that the team would accomplish in the following year; a necessary accident that would drive Valencia to become the best team of the world. 

Geniuses also make mistakes

GENIUSES ALSO MAKE MISTAKES

 

Salva Ballesta and Gonzalo de los Santos

In the summer of 2001, Valencia was in the middle of a rebuilding process. The team had just lost its president, its coach and its captain and star and, to make things worse, Valencia would have to play the UEFA Cup being the Champions League runners-up at the same time.

To revitalize the project, the club trusted its bench to a low profile coach, who created doubts in the fans and the club itself when his hiring was announced. That man was Rafa Benítez, who had landed in Mestalla thanks to the insistence of the sports director at the time, Javier Subirats.

The club signed low-profile but young and hungry players who, at the end, would be essential for the success the club would experience in the years to come. Men like Mista, Rufete, Marchena or Curro Torres joined the project. Even so, Valencia needed two more signings: a midfielder and a forward.

The style that Benítez wanted to use required a combination of a defensive midfielder with an attacking one and, unfortunately, Rubén Baraja suffered an injury that would rule him out for, at least, six months. That’s the reason why Benítez asked for a defensive midfielder who could also have a scoring ability and form a perfect combination with David Albelda. The player the club chose was Uruguayan Gonzalo de los Santos, from Málaga.

He was a mid-profile player but nevertheless, Valencia paid 15 million Euros to sign him. The coach’s persistence was key to make the transaction. The Uruguayan had just played two great season at Málaga and had caught the interest of many clubs, among them Héctor Cúper’s Internazionale, but the player chose to play in Mestalla. Benítez dismissed the chance to sign Sergio González from Espanyol, who would end up signing for Deportivo A Coruña, where he would be key for the Galicians’ success that season.

De los Santos didn’t play an important role for Valencia, though; he played 13 games in la Liga, most of them in the first half of the season, scoring just one goal. With Baraja’s return in January and due to the Valladolid-born’s great shape, De los Santos seldom played in the second half of the season, playing his last game in March, in a season that saw Valencia crowned as la Liga champions.

The Uruguayan, anyway, had a second chance for the 2002/03 season and stayed in the squad because the team hadn’t signed any player and Rafa Benítez needed as many players as possible to face four competitions, among them the return to the Champions League. He played more games than the previous season thanks to the coach’s rotation system, scoring one goal, but his performance was even poorer than the previous year. That’s why Valencia ended up loaning him to Atlético de Madrid for the following season.

After an inconsistent season, in the summer of 2004, Claudio Ranieri gave him the opportunity to be part of the squad for the 2004/05 season, despite the harsh competition he would have to face. But he only played one game and, in the winter transfer window, the player was sent out on loan to Mallorca. The following summer, Valencia decided to terminate his contract and the Uruguayan played two more seasons in Spain for Hércules and he finally went back to his country to play for Peñarol Montevideo, hanging up his boots in 2010.

Going back to the summer of 2001, Valencia also needed a top forward that could increase the level in that position. Jardel, as usual in previous summers, was the main target but Porto’s president, Pinto da Costa, was still angry at Valencia’s behavior when trying to sign Zlatko Zahovic a few years before. The second option was Chilean Marcelo Salas, from Lazio. Valencia had fresh money thanks to Gaizka Mendieta’s sale, precisely to Lazio, even though Valencia would never get all the money agreed with the Rome-based team. There was a total agreement with the player, as well as with Lazio (6 million plus Kily González’s transfer), but a debt that the Italians had with the player broke the deal since the club denied to pay it.

Finally, Valencia signed Atlético de Madrid’s forward Salva Ballesta. The Andalusian had just been the top scorer in la Liga with Racing Santander in 2000 and, a year later, he had been the top scorer in the second level with Atlético, scoring 29 and 27 goals, respectively. It wasn’t an acclaimed signing by the fans since he didn’t have the high profile that they expected, since he had played in the Second Division the previous season. Valencia had just played two Champions League finals and fans ambitioned to have better players. Rafa Benítez, as in De los Santos’ case, had a clear idea of who he wanted: Salva had always been his first option and he wanted the player no matter what. Valencia eventually paid 12 million for his acquisition.  

He struggled in his first season, playing 22 games in la Liga and scoring just five goals, a poor record for what people expected from him. In the second half of the competition, his playing time decreased dramatically, being Benítez’s fourth choice behind Juan Sánchez, Mista and Carew. Despite everything, he can say he was part of the team what won la Liga that year.

It’s worth to mention that Salva always had a conflictive attitude and also had a bad temper. That led to him having problems with Rafa Benítez from the beginning. The Madrid-born coach was very demanding and Salva didn’t like hard work as well as he didn’t like the coach’s rotation system, since that diminished his playing time. His attitude and his lack of goals meant that he lost prominence at the end of the season and Benítez regretted his decision to sign him.

Even so, Benítez gave him another chance for the following season, due to the lack of new signings. But after one game in la Liga, one more in Copa del Rey and another one in the Champions League (no goals), the player was loaned to English Bolton Wanderers. For the following season, Valencia loaned him once again, this time to Málaga, where he recovered his goalscoring abilities, although that didn’t mean that he would return to Valencia. In 2004, he went back to Atlético de Madrid, this time in the top flight, but the player didn’t meet the expectations. After his contract with Valencia finally expired, he played two years for Málaga, six months for Levante, two more years for Málaga again, this time in the Second Division, retiring in 2010 after playing one season for Albacete.

It can be demonstrated that Rafa Benítez has never been a good player-purchaser. In fact, from the moment Valencia wasted 27 million Euros in Salva and De los Santos, Valencia never allowed the coach to have the last call to sign new players, which led to problems with the board later. The same happened to him when he worked for Liverpool and Napoli, where his signings were also questionable, despite his capacity to take the best out of his players to achieve the goals of the club he worked for, which makes him a great coach. Rafa Benítez demonstrated, especially in this two signings, that geniuses also make mistakes.

The harmless tornado

THE HARMLESS TORNADO

Diego Alonso celebrating a goal

Valencia managed to keep, in the summer of 1999, the star of the team at that time: Claudio López. There were many rumors about the possibility that he could join an Italian side, and it was even believed that the player had an agreement to play for Atlético de Madrid, that would be coached by Claudio Ranieri, who had been Valencia coach a few months earlier.

It is supposed that the club convinced the player in order to accept a good offer in the future that could be interesting enough for Valencia and for the player, too. And that’s what happened; in the fall of 1999, Manuel Llorente, the chief executive of the club, who had more power than the president himself, came to an agreement with Italian giants Lazio to transfer the Argentinean in the summer of 2000 for no less than 35 million Euros.

Therefore, Valencia needed to find a replacement for Claudio López. The first player that arrived was Norwegian John Carew but, still, the club decided to bet for a Uruguayan striker, aged 25, who had been playing for Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata in Argentina: Diego Alonso, nicknamed “the Tornado”. He had scored 17 goals in the previous season, but fans distrusted this signing, since he was an unknown striker who was a late-comer to Europe, since most South-Americans who started to shine in their countries used to come overseas at a younger age. Besides, his spell at the Uruguayan national team had been limited so far. And last, but not least, his price was too high:     7 million Euros.

Alonso was an opportunistic striker, with a height (6ft. 2in.) that allowed him to be a good ball header, and it’s also remarkable to mention that he was a hard worker, too.

Neither Carew nor Alonso had similar characteristics to those of Claudio López, which provoked that the style of the team turned into a more defensive one, and that the tactic system was more important than any other aspect of the game.

Even so, his beginnings at Valencia were exciting, especially when he was given the opportunity to play in the second leg of the Champions League playoff, scoring two goals against Austrian side Tirol Innsbruck, showing that he was a classic gifted goal-getter. The Uruguayan started the season in the bench, though, due to the great shape shown by Carew and Juan Sánchez, who made an extraordinary couple.

 

Diego Alonso only scored two goals in La Liga, both at Mestalla, against Rayo Vallecano and Numancia. In the Champions League, however, he was well-aimed and scored four goals in the ten games he played. Little by little, Argentinean coach Héctor Cúper lost his confidence in the Uruguayan and Alonso didn’t play a single minute in the last month of the season.

After an ill-fated year at Valencia, the Uruguayan was loaned to Atlético de Madrid, playing in the second category of the Spanish football at the time, forming a great attacking couple with teenager Fernando Torres. Alonso became the top scorer of the competition and achieved promotion to La Liga with Atlético.

Nevertheless, that wasn’t enough to earn a return to Valencia, the La Liga champions that year, and he was loaned again, this time to Racing Santander, where he played a poor season, scoring just one goal.

The following summer, Valencia tried to include him in a trade with Sporting de Portugal in order to sign Cristiano Ronaldo, but the Lisbon-based team rejected the proposal. So, he was loaned to Málaga, where he had an irregular season, scoring six goals.

Finally, Diego Alonso was released by Valencia and started a path that led him to Mexico, China, Uruguay, Argentina (playing for his former team, Gimnasia y Esgrima) and a brief spell in Spain, playing for Murcia in the Second Division.

He is currently coaching Mexican Pachuca after having had spells in his home country and also in Paraguay.

Diego Alonso as a coach

The scoreless forward

THE SCORELESS FORWARD

 

Javier Arizmendi as a Valencia player

In the middle of the conflict between Quique and Carboni, Valencia started working on the roster for the 2007-2008 season without a clear idea of who was the decision-maker when it came to signings, sales and contract extensions and, to cap it all, president Juan Soler had neither the personality nor the ability to manage the sports area, apart from the economic area, as it was shown a few years later.

Even so, Valencia started signing new players. One of the first to come was central defender Alexis Ruano, coming from Getafe, who was expected to be a great addition. But the most surprising signing that summer was that of a forward who had just played his best season in the top flight playing for Deportivo A Coruña, also receiving a call to play for the Spanish national team thanks to Luis Aragonés in a game at Old Trafford against England, despite having scored only five goals in the whole season. It’s also worth to mention that he used to play as a right wing at Riazor, which meant that he didn’t have much importance in the forward area. That striker was Javier Arizmendi.

He was a tall forward (6 f. 3 inch.), who had good movements despite his height, but whose ability to score goals was limited, taking into the account his position in the pitch. That’s the reason why many coaches preferred to place him in the right wing where he could exploit his speed and his fantastic work ethics.

The truth is that his beginnings were exciting. He was a product of the Atlético de Madrid youth system, but he needed playing time and he found it in Racing de Santander, loaned by Atlético. In 2005 he won the Mediterranean Games with the U-21 national team in Almería. It’s curious to mention that he celebrated that feat with a Francoist flag although he later said that it was a flag that someone from the crowd had thrown. He signed for Deportivo that year, playing two good seasons before catching the attention of Valencia’s coach at that time, Quique Sánchez Flores, who had the same agent as Arizmendi. Atlético de Madrid recovered the player in order to sell him to Valencia in exchange for 7 million Euros.

He was one of the most used players by Quique first and Koeman later, but his season was disappointing. It’s true that he had two important moments during the year. The first of them was at the Santiago Bernabeu, in a game tied 2-2, in which Arizmendi ran the right wing with great speed, getting rid of Cannavaro and lying Casillas intentionally, scoring the goal finding a gap in the goalkeeper’s post. That goal gave the win to Valencia, who had been wandering in the standings and whose position in La Liga was starting to be in question. The other moment was when Ronald Koeman, in a last-minute decision, chose Arizmendi in his starting XI in the Copa del Rey final over Joaquín, who would see the game from the bench. Arizmendi played a good game and was close to scoring the first goal, but Mata was quicker and headed the ball into the net to give the lead to the team.  

 

After Koeman’s sacking, the man who had given many opportunities to him, perhaps due to the bad relationship between the Dutchman and Joaquín, Arizmendi lost his importance in the team and in the 2008 preseason, he was transferred to Real Zaragoza, in Segunda División at that time, recovering part of the investment made by Valencia the previous year, being paid 4 million Euros. Even so, Valencia couldn’t receive all that money since Zaragoza declared his insolvency the very next year.

He played a fantastic season for Zaragoza in the second category of Spanish football (9 goals) and achieving promotion but, in his return to the top flight, Arizmendi had a poor year and in 2010 he signed for Getafe that, after a bad season, decided to loan him to Swiss Neuchatel and Mallorca, respectively. In 2013 he went back to Deportivo, this time in Segunda División, but his second experience at Riazor was frustrating. After leaving A Coruña, Arizmendi has been training on his own trying to find a club but he hasn’t received any interesting offer and, aged only 31, it seems that his retirement is not very far.

When the pupil became the boss

WHEN THE PUPIL BECAME THE BOSS

 

Quique Sánchez Flores and Amedeo Carboni

 

It was the summer of 2005 and Valencia had just displayed a horrible season after the double achieved the previous year. The team hadn’t been capable of qualifying for the UEFA Cup and needed a drastic change. The first of all would take place in the bench. After Claudio Ranieri’s failed return and Antonio López’s unsuccessful experiment, president Juan Soler decided to hire a club’s old legend, Quique Sánchez Flores, one of the best right-backs in the history of Valencia CF. He had just completed a fantastic season at Getafe in his first year in the top flight, saving them from relegation several weeks before the end of the season.  The fans hoped that his characteristics as a coach would be comparable to those of Rafa Benítez, since Quique had a similar profile: young, hungry for success and a clear game style.

Simultaneously, another club’s legend, Amedeo Carboni, a left-back, was about to play his last season as a professional footballer. The Italian player had just signed a contract extension in 2004, signing for two seasons, getting paid in two seasons the same amount of money that he could have earned in one, that is, dividing his wage. But, aged 40, he knew that his retirement was close.

2005/2006 season was pretty positive for the team, since it qualified for the Champions League with two games to go, but it was also the origin of a rift that would immediately affect the club and the fans, too. From the very first moment Quique and Carboni, two strong personalities, clashed. Besides, Quique gave playing time to Moretti and Fabio Aurelio, leaving Carboni as the third choice in the rotation. He only played 5 games in La Liga, a very limited amount of minutes for a player who was used to playing almost every single game. After seeing that he was having no playing opportunities, Carboni took advantage of the situation and obtained a degree in sports direction, travelling sporadically to Madrid to go to classes. As expected, Carboni retired at the end of the season and received an outstanding ovation from the crowd, although he wasn’t given a sweet farewell by his teammates who, except for a few players, left the Italian alone in the pitch saying goodbye to the supporters. 

Carboni saying goodbye to the fans at Mestalla

 

Even so, Juan Soler, surprisingly, decided to fire Javier Subirats as a sports director (who had just returned to Valencia two years after departing) and hired inexperienced Carboni, who had finally obtained the degree in sports direction.

Carboni never had an agent when he was a Valencia player, so his work was characterized by the fact that he didn’t give agents more than was legally stipulated. That brought some problems, mainly when he had to negotiate Ayala’s contract extension, apart from having a bad relationship with him from the time they both played together. Quique didn’t like Soler’s decision, either, since his relationship with Carboni wasn’t good and saw that his pupil had become his boss overnight. Besides, the coach realized that the Italian had also become the apple of the president’s eye.

As a result, the club was harmed by this confrontation. The decision-taking in signings was the first conflict they experienced. The first one occurred when the club was looking for a right-wing. The Italian began negotiations to sign Brazilian’s Mancini, from AS Roma, who had just played a preseason game at Mestalla, the Trofeo Naranja. In the post-game press conference, Quique ruined the negotiations after stating that Mancini was not the kind of player he needed. Meanwhile, president Juan Soler had tried to sign Cristiano Ronaldo but, given its impossibility, Carboni kept searching for the best option and laid on the table the names of his compatriots Franco Semioli (Chievo Verona) and Marco Marchionni (Parma), both immediately rejected by the coaching staff. They finally agreed to sign former FC Barcelona player, Portuguese Simao Sabrosa, from Benfica. But when the deal was close and the player was waiting in a hotel room, expected to be presented the following day in the presentation game, his agent went to the roof and demanded more money. Carboni, reluctant to accept agents’ pressures, suspended the negotiations. After seeing the difficulty the club was having to sign a right-winger and with the need to sign a star, Juan Soler decided to call the shots and, after Manchester United’s refusal on Cristiano Ronaldo, he signed Joaquín, from Real Betis, paying 25 million Euros, with the president himself acting as a financial guarantor.

The final conflict was produced when the club was searching for a forward. The club was looking for a player who could complement the duo Villa-Morientes. Quique had a clear idea of what he wanted: Espanyol’s Luis García, but Carboni had different plans. The Italian didn’t like this player and his asking price was prohibitive (more than 15 million Euros according to the media). So, in his determination to sign a compatriot and despite the coaching staff’s disagreement, Carboni signed Francesco Tavano, paying about 10 million Euros. The Italian forward had just scored 19 goals playing for modest Empoli the previous season.

Quique, logically, rarely used the Italian player in his team rotation despite the many injuries the squad was suffering. Besides, he took the excuse that Tavano was not in a good shape at all and even had a slight overweight. His introverted personality didn’t help, either, since he had no connection with the rest of his teammates. He only played 221 minutes divided in 6 games (no goals) before packing his baggage back to Italy, loaned to AS Roma.

Francesco Tavano in one of his very few games he played for Valencia

 

Despite the efforts by Juan Soler to improve the situation, the distance between Quique and Carboni was already too big. It even affected the fans, who created two different sides, one of them defending Quique and the other one supporting Carboni.

The team ended the season achieving its main goal, the Champions League qualification, and the president came to the conclusion that he had to choose one of them and fire the other, for the club’s stability and future. When everybody expected that the victim would be Quique, Soler decided to keep the coach, although he would fire him a few months later.

But there was a last consequence of this clash after the Italian’s departure. After an intelligent strategy, Carboni had signed a young talent from the Real Madrid academy: Juan Mata. The player had refused all the extension offers made by Real and Carboni offered him the possibility of having top flight minutes in one of the best teams of La Liga. He signed the player in a free transfer, since his contract expired that year, and against the opinion of the coaching staff. Rumors say that Quique didn’t give him playing time because he was signed by Carboni and other people also dared to state that, since Mata had denied to continue at Real Madrid, Míchel, who was the player’s coach the previous season and good friends with Quique, had recommended the Valencia coach not to include the player in his line-up. But they were speculations. At the end, history says that Quique didn’t include him in his rotation and it was Dutchman Ronald Koeman the man who took the wonderkid out of his ostracism and helped him to develop his potential.

Juan Mata celebrating a goal in his first season at Valencia

At the end, this Quique vs. Carboni confrontation was just a warm-up for bigger conflicts that happened a few months later and that led Valencia CF to dangerous spots in the standings, being too close to relegation.

The weirdest season

THE WEIRDEST SEASON

 

Valencia CF players celebrating the Copa del Rey conquest

 

Everybody knows that Valencia CF has never been a millpond, either at a sports level or socially. Fans have always witnessed problems regarding the ownership of the club, multiple financial problems and conflicts at a sports level that have led to institutional crises. But there was a year, a season, in which several elements were gathered in order to see the club crumble affecting the institution itself, and most importantly, the team. And even so, the club moved on with a success that fans will always remember.

It was June 2007 and the struggle for the control of the team was already bitter. The coach was Quique Sánchez Flores and he had declared a war with the then director of football Amedeo Carboni. Both had been Valencia CF legends in their past as players of the club. The main conflict, as usual in these situations, lied in who had the last say to sign new players as well as in the relationship they both had with the heavyweights of the team. All that led to the creation of two sides by the players and the fans themselves.

The situation was unsustainable and the man who was in charge of the club in that moment, president Juan Soler, didn’t help to solve the problem. Quique had one year left until the end of his contract and the end of the season had not been brilliant. Real Madrid and FC Barcelona hadn’t shone and many fans and people from the board had the thought that, once the team achieved the Champions League spot, they had relaxed and settled with the fourth position in La Liga. Besides, the team had been defeated in the quarter-finals of the Champions League in a painful way, against Chelsea FC in extra-time. Many fans wanted the coach to be fired. On the other hand, Carboni had devised hard strategies when it came to negotiations and signings. He couldn’t stand that the coach would intrude in his decisions and didn’t have the best of relationships with football agents (he never had one when he was a player), which caused, for example, Fabián Ayala’s departure after the Italian changed the conditions of his contract extension. 

Quique in his days as Valencia CF coach

 

Juan Soler said that at the end of June he would decide which one of the two would stay and, when fans and journalists expected that the chosen man to stay would be Carboni (he was the president’s right-hand man), he finally opted to choose Quique. He fired the Italian in order to make the coach happy. The club signed former Atlético Madrid director of football Miguel Ángel Ruiz, who had a better relationship with Quique, and both had similar ideas and more consensus. New players were bought with the consent of the coach, mostly players whose agent was the same as Quique’s by that time, like Arizmendi or Alexis, although he had to make room for players signed by Carboni before he got fired, like Mata, Sunny or Hildebrand, but he didn’t give them much importance in the team, though. Valencia CF also signed Helguera from Real Madrid and Caneira, who was back from his loan at Sporting de Portugal.

But the main problems were found when the club was looking for a midfielder. Valencia CF needed a replacement for Baraja, who had had many injuries during the previous season. The sports direction probed many options but there didn’t seem to be a clear idea of what they were looking for, since all of them were different kind of players. There were rumors that Carboni had an agreement with Ajax’s Wesley Sneijder but rumors also said that Quique prevented that from happening, saying the famous sentence: “he doesn’t fit in this team”. Afterwards, the club tried to sign Lucho González and Kim Kallström, but neither FC Porto nor Olympique Lyonnais lowered their asking prices. The director of football also considered signing Seydou Keita, from Racing Lens, who would later sign for Sevilla FC and that would also play for Valencia CF in 2014, but he was discarded since, according to Miguel Ángel Ruiz, “with all the names that are being mentioned in the media, if I bring this unknown player, they will run me out of town”. A few days later, Rafael Van der Vaart’s name came to light, and even a newspaper dressed him with a Valencia CF shirt, but his team, Hamburger refused to negotiate. Curious to mention that both Dutchmen, Sneijder and Van der Vaart, joined Real Madrid a few weeks later. The club finally reached to an agreement to sign Benfica’s player Manuel Fernandes; he had played on loan for Everton FC the previous season. He was more unknown than the others, with a tremendous quality but also unfocused and lazy. They paid 18 million Euros for a player who ended up being a failure and who cost a fortune to the club. During those days, Valencia CF also signed Serbian giant Nikola Zigic, who had succeeded at Racing Santander with his 2’02 tall (6 ft. 8 in.). They also paid 18 million Euros for him and he was also unsuccessful.
 

Rafael Van der Vaart posing with the Valencia CF shirt

 

The team progressed from the Champions League playoff in August, beating weak Swedish team Elfsborg, but in La Liga, the team had an awful start, with a huge defeat against emergent neighbors Villarreal CF, managed by Manuel Pellegrini. The style the team was using was inconsistent and the fans showed their discontent with the coach, whose relationship with the supporters had been weakened by leaps and bounds. Even so, the team started winning games with great difficulty but the sensations weren’t the best. In the Champions League, the situation was not better; the team won at Gelsenkirchen against Schalke 04 but was defeated by Chelsea FC at Mestalla and, to make things worse, they lost at Trondheim against weak Norwegians Rosenborg. The final blow was given by Sevilla FC, who authoritatively beat Valencia CF at Sánchez Pizjuán and provoked one of the most surreal episodes of the last years, when the communications director, at the wee hours of the morning and wearing a hoodie, announced that Quique had been fired.

Fans showing their displeasure with Quique

The media brought rumors about a possible interest to sign Marcello Lippi (World Champion in 2006 coaching Italy) and José Mourinho (recently fired at Chelsea FC). But the president Juan Soler had a clear idea on who Quique’s replacement should be: Ronald Koeman. At the Champions League draw in August, the Dutch coach told the president that the team would never win anything with Quique in the bench and that he himself was the most suitable option. As unstable and faint-hearted as he was, Soler named him as Valencia CF coach, despite having to pay PSV Eindhoven, the club Koeman belonged to, 3 million Euros. He signed a long, expensive contract, which doubled what Quique was earning. Óscar Fernández, the reserves coach, took charge of the team for two games before the Dutchman arrived. In those games, the team was humiliated by Real Madrid at Mestalla (1-5) and also got a balsamic win at Mallorca (0-2).

Ronald Koeman in his days as Valencia CF coach

But the Dutchman’s arrival didn’t solve the football problems the team suffered, and he couldn’t solve the psychological problems of the players, but rather it was like adding more fuel to the fire. Valencia CF got knocked out of the Champions League in December and the team was going downhill in La Liga. And then, in December 18, the situation finally exploded.

Ronald Koeman, all of a sudden, on his own initiative and also with Juan Soler’s support, decided to marginalize three legends of the roster: David Albelda, Santi Cañizares and Miguel Ángel Angulo. Many people think that Joaquín and Vicente were the next due to their bad relationship with the Dutchman but that would have been too much. That led to a bigger division among fans and players themselves. The Dutch coach named Rubén Baraja, Carlos Marchena and Marco Caneira as new captains.

The following days, all the fans could see were press conferences, tears and shame. All this led to the thought that those three players would leave in the winter transfer window. In fact, Albelda had offers from Chelsea FC and Villarreal CF, but he wanted Valencia CF to pay him what was remaining of his contract. Valencia CF denied to do so and the player sued the club. Finally, the three players stayed and had to practise on their own for three months, far from his teammates; they never received a call to join the rest of their teammates for a game or a practise. That meant that Albelda, a Spanish international who had been a key member of the squad during those years, lost his spot and missed Euro 2008, that Spain eventually won led by Luis Aragonés.

David Albelda crying after being marginalized by Koeman

 

The club decided to sign two new players demanded by Koeman: his countryman Hedwiges Maduro, a defensive midfielder from Ajax who had been bought to replace Albelda and for whom Valencia CF paid 3 million Euros, and a young, gifted offensive midfielder Ever Banega, from Boca Juniors, in exchange for 14 million Euros, who would replace Manuel Fernandes, who had to leave the club in January after a night scandal in which he ended up in jail. Both didn’t contribute very much in the remainder of the season even though Banega, aged only 19, in dribs and drabs, showed he could be a football star in the future. 

The day after the conflict of Albelda Cañizares and Angulo, the team traveled to Irún to start its participation in Copa del Rey, to face Real Unión. Koeman saw that the team was underachieving in La Liga, so he said that the main objective of the club was to win the Copa del Rey, since it was the shortest path to win a trophy. Valencia CF won Real Unión and Betis in the following round, with great performances by Joaquín and Zigic. The following opponent would be Atlético Madrid; after a tightened win at Mestalla with a goal by Silva, the team suffered beyond words at Vicente Calderón, losing 3-2 but getting to the following round thanks to the double value of away goals; Timo Hildebrand played an outstanding game and also did Juan Mata, who was one of the few who benefited from Koeman’s arrival, since he hadn’t played very much under Quique’s orders.

It was in that moment when the team believed that Copa del Rey could be the last hope for the team after a bad season and, in the semifinals, they had to face FC Barcelona, with Frank Rijkaard in his last months as the blaugrana coach. Valencia CF miraculously got a draw at Camp Nou, even though it was Barça the one who had been behind the score most of the game; Xavi tied the game in the 93th minute (David Villa had scored for Valencia CF in the first minutes of the game). Hildebrand was the hero of the team; the German goalkeeper compensated his awful performances in La Liga with fantastic games in Copa del Rey; he saved more than twenty shots at Camp Nou, a record. The game at Mestalla was exciting and fans witnessed an extraordinary evening. The team suffered but won 3-2 and Valencia CF got a spot for the final. Getafe CF, the reigning runners-up of the competition at that moment, would be the opponent to play the big game. 

The final took place at Vicente Calderón, which was controversial due to the obvious proximity between Madrid and Getafe. Even so, Valencia CF players mentally prepared to win the title. In the 10th minute, Valencia CF was already leading the score 2-0, after the goals scored by Mata and Alexis. Getafe CF frightened Valencia CF fans with a penalty goal scored by Granero just before half-time but in the last minutes of the game, when Getafe CF was pushing to try to tie the game, a masterful foul shot by Baraja was not well saved by Getafe CF’s goalkeeper and Morientes scored with a header; the final score was 3-1. In one of the weirdest seasons in its history, Valencia CF had won a title, which gave them access to the following year’s UEFA Cup, and even so, the team was just a few points away from relegation, curious since it was a team built to get a Champions League spot and, why not, compete to win La Liga.

 

In that moment of the season, Valencia CF had a shocking moment, beating the La Liga winner-to-be Real Madrid, at Santiago Bernabeu, 2-3, with a goal scored by Arizmendi in the 89th minute, and a superb performance by Timo Hildebrand. It was another landmark in a season that has always been considered the weirdest season.

It is also important to mention Juan Soler’s resignation. Tired of seeing that people thought that he was to blame for the club’s situation, he decided to stop going to Mestalla to attend the games, and a few months later he quit. His advisor, Agustín Morera, took charge of the team until the end of the season.

Koeman got fired five days after Valencia CF had won the Copa del Rey final, following a loss 5-1 to Athletic at San Mamés. The situation in La Liga was more than dangerous and the players needed a change. The delegate of the team, Voro González, took control for the last five games of the season, with four wins, one of them being dramatic, beating Real Zaragoza who was a direct opponent to avoid relegation. So, Voro became the coach with the best percentage of wins in the history of the club. Besides, he gave playing time to Albelda, Cañizares and Angulo. The goalkeeper decided to retire at the end of the season, Angulo left the following year, in 2009, when he signed for Sporting de Portugal, retiring in 2010, and Albelda continued in Valencia CF until 2013, when he retired.

Valencia CF finally avoided relegation thanks to those games won by Voro’s players in a strange season, in which the team was misdirected from the very beginning at all levels, and that would have serious consequences for the team’s economy and also for its performances in the pitch.