Five keys to Valencia’s demise

MADRID - La Liga giants Valencia are searching for their ninth permanent coach in four years following the sacking of former Liverpool assistant manager Pako Ayestaran (below centre).

The six-time Spanish champions are enduring their worst start to a league season for 17 years, as four straight defeats leave them rooted to the foot of the table.
We look at what has gone wrong under the auspices of Singaporean owner Peter Lim.

LIM PROJECT PETERS OUT

Peter Lim’s €420 million (S$637.6 million) takeover of the financially-stricken Los Che in 2014 was met with great enthusiasm off and initially on the field.
The new owner promised to clear the club’s €200 million debts and return Valencia to Europe’s elite.

Just a year ago the plan was still on track as Valencia returned to the Champions League for the first time in three years on the back of a fourth-placed finish in La Liga.

Yet, the project began to go awry when Nuno Espirito Santo was sacked following a slow start last season. Former Manchester United captain Gary Neville’s tenure ended just four months later, after a mere three La Liga wins in 16 games, to be replaced by Ayestaran.

But Lim shipped out Valencia’s best players in the summer. Captain Paco Alcacer (above) and Euro 2016 winner Andre Gomes headed north to Barcelona, while Shkodran Mustafi moved to Arsenal as Valencia recouped more than €100 million.

Little of that was reinvested into a squad that finished 12th last season.

INSTABILITY

The last time a Valencia coach remained in charge for at least two seasons was current Paris Saint Germain boss Unai Emery between 2008 and 2012. In his final three seasons, Emery finished third behind Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona and a Real Madrid armed with Cristiano Ronaldo, while he sold Valencia’s best players in David Villa, David Silva and Juan Mata.

The managerial merry-go-round and constant upheaval of the playing squad has only served to see Valencia fall behind not just the traditional giants of Spanish football, but also facing a battle just to remain in the top flight.

NO MENDES MAGIC

One of the fiercest criticisms of Lim has been his reliance on Portuguese super agent Jorge Mendes (above left) in the transfer market. This has served only to dish up a series of expensive mistakes.

Record €30 million signing Rodrigo has scored just 12 goals in three seasons, while Mendes-represented centre-backs Eliaquim Mangala and Ezequiel Garay were brought in just before the transfer deadline last month because the two they bought last year — Aymen Abdennour (€25 million from Monaco) and Ruben Vezo, now on loan at Granada — failed to make the grade.

SPANISH PROPERTY BUBBLE BURST

The root of Valencia’s financial problems, which precede the Lim era but continues to dog the club, was the crash of the Spanish property market in 2008. Back then, the club’s stadium, Mestalla (above), was set to be sold for hundreds of millions, given its prime city-centre location in one of Europe’s most burgeoning property markets, with Valencia moving up the road to a 60,000-capacity new Mestalla.

Construction had even started on the new stadium when the market collapsed, the price of land where the Mestalla sits plummeted and the club was left without the funds to finish the new ground. A now rotting concrete bowl still stands on the outskirts of the city with no certainty it will ever be completed.

ATLETICO PULL AWAY AS THIRD FORCE

Valencia’s upheaval has coincided with a period of unparallelled success for Atletico Madrid (above), which have supplanted the former as Spanish football’s third force.

Atletico have reaped the rewards of stability brought by Diego Simeone’s five-year reign as coach, having had a similar record of ditching bosses before the Argentine’s arrival. Los Rojiblancos have reached two Champions League finals in three years, similar to Valencia’s run to back-to-back finals in 2000 and 2001. AFP