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.