Javier Aguirre is taking charge of a club that hasn't tasted silverware since 2019, when Marcelino's side beat Ernesto Valverde's Barcelona 1-2 in the Copa del Rey final thanks to goals from Kevin Gameiro and Rodrigo Moreno. Since that night, Valencia has drifted further from its old identity than toward it.
The decline accelerated almost immediately. Days after that Copa triumph came the COVID-19 pandemic, and Valencia's Champions League last-16 first leg at Atalanta, a 4-1 defeat at San Siro, turned into what the club itself has described as a biological bomb: 35% of the sporting staff ended up infected. The team never really recovered its footing after that.
Since then, the bench has churned through Albert Celades, Salvador 'Voro' González, Javi Gracia, José Bordalás, Gennaro Gattuso, Rubén Baraja, Carlos Corberán and Óscar Fuentes, none of them managing to restore the club to its former level. Things got serious in 2023, when Valencia flirted with relegation between matchdays 20 and 30 before a 1-1 draw at Betis's Benito Villamarín on the final day kept them up.
Protests Against Peter Lim
Behind the sporting slide sits an ownership saga. Singaporean businessman Peter Lim bought a 91% stake in the club in 2014 and has won just one trophy in twelve years in charge, that 2019 Copa del Rey. Valencia has not played in European competition since the 2020 Atalanta tie, the longest such absence in the club's history, and fan anger has become a fixture at Mestalla. In 2023, around 15,000 supporters marched demanding Lim sell his stake. He has changed club president five times and sporting director six times since taking over, and has not budged; the current president is his son, Kiat Lim.
Still a Spanish Heavyweight
Despite everything, Valencia's stands keep filling up. According to Conrado Valle, AS correspondent in Valencia, only Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic Club have played more LaLiga seasons, and Valencia has been relegated to the second division just once, in 1986. The club sits fifth in LaLiga's all-time points table and fifth in Spanish football for trophies won: six league titles, eight Copa del Rey wins, two Spanish Super Cups, a European Cup Winners' Cup, three UEFA Cups, a UEFA Super Cup and an Intertoto. Valle also notes that Mestalla's average attendance rate last season reached 98%, the highest in the league.
"Valencia's problem is that since 2019 Peter Lim's project has gone from bad to worse and there is a tremendous social crisis, with the supporters totally against the owner, whose sporting management has relegated Valencia from its place in the league and in Europe," Valle explains. "The club has gone six years without competing in Europe, the longest period in its history without doing so."
That is the club Javier Aguirre now takes on: a historic name with a loyal fanbase still packing the stadium, but stuck in its longest run without European football and led by an ownership regime that much of Mestalla wants gone.
