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.