THE
BEST IN THE WORLD
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| Valencia players celebrating the hisorical doublé |
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.
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| Claudio López and Eto'o, Valencia targets in the summer of 2003 |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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.
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| 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.
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.
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| Rafa Benítez lifting the Champions League trophy in 2005 with Liverpool |
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