In his mandate, Valencia has not improved sportingly, socially, or economically
At a sporting level, the Copa del Rey obtained in 2019 stands out as the most outstanding milestone
Peter Lim, Valencia’s largest shareholder, celebrates this Monday eight years of his triumphant landing at the club with a crowd bath in a League match against Elche, although the excessive affection of that afternoon lost gas quickly to reach a goal very soon. state of total disconnection between the Singaporean leader on the one hand and Valencianism and the Valencian society, on the other.
The estrangement that only grows between Lim and the fans is not only physical, as the leader resides in Singapore and has only passed through Valencia on a few occasions, but some of the members of his team such as former president Anil Murthy have made notorious efforts to increase the distances from its management and its pronouncements.
It is true, on the other hand, that the presence of Layhoon Chan as president of the club in a first stage prior to that of Murthy and also in the current one, after his return this summer, has tempered the relationship of the entity with the environment since his ways have been more careful than those of the Murthy, despite being a diplomat by profession.
The arrival of Lim was greeted with suspicion by a sector of Valencianism, with enthusiasm, by another, and with skepticism by a majority wishing that the purchase of the majority shareholding on their part would serve for the entity to refloat economically and, consequently, create a favorable scenario to improve at a sporting level. It has not been.
During the years it has been in Lim’s hands, Valencia has not improved sportingly, socially, or economicallythe three substantial pillars on which an entity should function better, whose profile is much lower than the one it offered in October 2014.
At a sporting level, the Copa del Rey obtained in 2019 stands out as the most outstanding milestone hand in hand with Marcelino García Toral, the only one of the ten coaches that Valencia has had in this period who has penetrated the fans and who is only similar to Gennaro Gatusso, the current coach, who has got off to a good start among the hobby, although it is still early to value his work.
During this time, Valencia is no longer a regular team in the Champions League to become, in the best of cases, a regular in the middle of the Spanish League table, which has not even allowed him to play the third continental tournament, the Conference League, since his squads have been more discreet than those prior to the landing of the Singaporean businessman.
No investment in the workforce, the team suffered, but other fundamental issues have not been resolved either. The most striking is the conclusion of the works of the new Mestalla together with the sale of the plots of the current field. In the last year and a half, the issue has come to the forefront of current affairs in the field of local and regional politics.
With Murthy as the protagonist, the disagreement with the institutions as a result of the club’s passivity in this matter is present in the public life of the city, on whose horizon they have appeared in recent weeks the urgencies to resume the works in the context of Valencia’s options to host the 2030 World Cup to which Spain and Portugal aspire with the participation of Ukraine.
The club has lived and lives on the margins of a society that for almost a century has considered it its own and that now does not understand, for example, that trying to win titles is not a priority for the largest shareholder, nor the reasons why its relationship with the environment is not clear.
All this without forgetting the snubs that, especially Anil Murthy, has had with Valencianism, public representatives, supporters clubs and younger fansas well as the lack of criteria when designing a soccer project with aspirations, except in the stage of Mateu Alemany as sports director with Marcelino as coach.
Consequence of all this has been the creation of opposition groups to Lim’s career, the demonstrations of the fans in the street and the recurring chant for him to leave the entity that is heard in the 19th minute of each of the matches that take place. dispute in Mestalla. In any case, his intentions and his future plans, if he has them, are unknown.