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.