Valencia Forging New Identity After Gary Neville Reign

“Valencia have changed. That much is obvious,” wrote Vicente Bau of city newspaper Superdeporte (in Spanish) last Thursday, the day after Los Che’s 4-0 demolition of Eibar. “Pako Ayestaran might continue (as coach) or not next season, but there’s no doubt that his Valencia is quite distinct from the one he inherited from Gary Neville. From boredom to fun.”

That much had been clear in the stands at the Mestalla on Wednesday evening. Those famously demanding fans, who have spent most of the campaign venting their frustration both through their chants and their waved white handkerchiefs, raised the roof with their cheers, even with the old stadium only two-thirds full. They even broke out a celebratory Mexican wave after Joao Cancelo’s beautifully constructed goal had finished the scoring in the second half.

That Wednesday night was a story of two Pakos—or, more accurately, Pako and Paco. The latter, homegrown striker Paco Alcacer, was brought into the side in the sole change from the XI that beat mighty Barcelona at Camp Nou on the previous Sunday, replacing midfielder Enzo Perez with Andre Gomes and winning goalscorer Santi Mina shuffling across accordingly. The popular Alcacer smashed a hat-trick as Valencia swept their visitors aside with surprising fluency.   

Switching the team around after undoubtedly the team’s outstanding result of a difficult season underlined just how comfortable Ayestaran seems at the helm. He has history with the club, of course, having been Rafael Benitez’s assistant when Valencia won two La Liga titles in three years, in 2002 and 2004.

When Neville appointed Ayestaran in February to reprise the role—and the former Manchester United player has always insisted that this was the case, rather than having the coach thrust upon him, as per BBC Sport—he undoubtedly had drawing on this experience in mind. Now, with hindsight, he may will consider that Ayestaran was always being lined up as a safe pair of hands to pick up the slack when Neville’s position became untenable.

Not that the locals, who are enjoying their football for pretty much the first time in this campaign, will care one jot. Their appreciation of Ayestaran is based on more than simple nostalgia for the good old days when Valencia were a genuine force, the Atletico Madrid of their day, if you like.

The new man has not rested on his laurels for a second. Although he told Sky Sports’ Guillem Balague in this recent interview that Neville’s struggles to communicate presented a difficulty, the fact is that Ayestaran’s actions have been far more important than any spoken instruction. Much of his work so far has been firefighting, plain and simple.

That the club were forced into firing Neville before the summer (which they really rather would have avoided) made clear what the remit was. A shambolic defeat at Las Palmas (a match in which Valencia had been gifted a second-minute lead) underlined the urgency that was required. Ayestaran quickly decided that his players weren’t fit enough, and ordered double sessions of training to get his men up to speed.

The work is clearly paying dividends already, as Bau wrote. This team has a zest and an identity, lifting the Mestalla crowd. Set in a fluid 4-3-3 to face Eibar, the combination of the left-footed Rodrigo (a major disappointment since his arrival from Benfica) and the excellent young right-back Cancelo on the right flank gave them real incision.

Alberto Saiz/Associated Press

Ayestaran’s value from an ideological perspective matters to those fans, too; not just as a symbol of a former era of glory, but as a definitive break from the last two coaches. Simply, he is not from the Peter Lim/Jorge Mendes sphere of influence, like Neville or Nuno, under whom they began the season. There is no suggestion of cronyism. Time will tell if this is just an emergency measure or a template with which to move forward.

Strategy was particularly on the mind as Eibar came to town. The tiny Basque club have had to be tight in this area, after being famously forced to hastily pull together a share issue to reach the minimum amount of working capital required by La Liga's financial laws on promotion.

Nevertheless, Eibar arrived at Mestalla a point ahead of Valencia with five games to go, despite having a seasonal budget of some €80 million less than them, as the print edition of Superdeporte pointed out on matchday. 

Neville’s first La Liga game on the bench, incidentally, had been a 1-1 draw at Eibar’s Ipurua home in mid-December—he had been appointed a week before, but caretaker Voro and brother Phil oversaw the draw with Barcelona while Gary settled in, before he took his seat on the bench for a Champions League home defeat to Lyon.

It must immediately be said in Neville’s defence that he took on a very bad situation. Valencia’s final league match under Nuno, at Sevilla, was a sorry sight. It was a 1-0 thrashing in which it was clear that the players had given up on the coach that guided them back into the top four just last season. The dressing room turning their back on him again underlines that Neville’s problems were not purely of the linguistic variety.

So it seems a bit presumptuous to talk of turning points—after all, they won four in a row under Neville in February, including a double demolition of Rapid Vienna in the Europa League. Yet there’s already a major difference.

Neville’s Valencia never truly broke out of their string of poor performances. Even the match in which he broke his duck in La Liga, against the even more lowly Espanyol, was far from convincing, with goalkeeper Diego Alves saving their bacon more than once. They never got away from their continual repetition of the same mistakes, as evident in the two home losses against Athletic Bilbao and Celta Vigo that sealed Neville’s fate Athletic—70 minutes of solidity followed by swift, and total collapse.

Three successive La Liga wins (including the famous victory at Barca, of course) didn’t totally wipe out the shudders that accompany those memories. Quite rightly, too, with Alcacer’s next goal after his hat-trick being a late leveller to snatch a point at struggling Getafe on Sunday. Even the youngest members of the squad are wary.

“We started the season badly, but now we have to fix things,” Cancelo told the gathered media after the Eibar game. The Portuguese player wasn’t getting carried away about the prospect of sneaking a European place. “We have to try to put things right, and game-by-game we will do that and see where we finish.”

Ayestaran’s attitude, undoubtedly, will be the same, even though sporting director Jesus Garcia Pitarch has admitted that he is a genuine candidate for the full-time role (as reported by EFE, via El Mundo Deportivo, in Spanish). As will that of the fans. Working out where Valencia will go next is a subject for the summer. For now, all involved being able to enjoy their football at last is a good starting point.