Valencia won two Ligas, the UEFA Cup and reached two Champions League finals at the turn of the century, but a half-built stadium, Gary Neville in the dugout and Peter Lim’s toxic ownership threaten Los Che’s very existence
Words Marcus Alves
Back in late February, Fabio Aurelio returned to former club Valencia for several days, to check on one of his clients. Now an agent, the former left-back won two La Liga titles and the 2003-04 UEFA Cup with the Spanish giants, before rejoining manager Rafa Benitez at Liverpool two years after that continental success.
Going back to the city where his greatest triumphs occured, the Brazilian couldn’t help but feel a bit melancholic every time he looked through his hotel room window at the modern Avenida de las Cortes Valencianas.
“It’s kind of sad, you know?” Aurelio tells FourFourTwo a few weeks later. “You draw back the curtains and there it is, right in front of you, that big monument, static, nothing much happening around it, no real life. You look from the outside and think that the stadium is finished, but no. No one can really say if that day will ever come.
“So, damn, it’s sad because you’ve lived there and know that city. The club and the supporters deserve a stadium like that.”
With a planned capacity of up to 80,000, Nou Mestalla was destined to take Valencia into a new era when construction began in 2007. Instead, work was paused within two years due to a lack of funds, turning a half-built arena into a white elephant that epitomises the club’s myriad problems. Having previously aimed to re-establish themselves at the top of European football, Los Che are now at real risk of La Liga relegation for the first time since 1986. It wasn’t supposed to be like this...
THE HITMAN AND HIM
In the early 2000s, Valencia claimed two league crowns under Benitez, pipping Real Madrid and Barcelona teams containing Zinedine Zidane (2001-02) and Ronaldinho (2003-04). Los Che also won the 2004 UEFA Cup Final under Benitez to be named the world’s best team, in rankings published by the International Federation of Football History. Hector Cuper had previously led them to consecutive Champions League finals in 2000 and 2001. They feared no one.
“We’re going to be the envy of Madrid and Barcelona,” promised club president Juan Soler during a dinner with journalists in late 2004, at which he announced, among other things, that they would build a new home.
Soler wasn’t kidding, having asked UEFA what it would take for a stadium to be rated five stars. The original idea was for it to be “as luxurious as possible” and host
