On October 24, 2014, ten years ago this Thursday, the Valencia CF Foundation officially closed the sale of the majority shareholding of the Valencia CF to Meriton Holdingsthe Singaporean company Peter Lima decade in which the Che club has gone from fighting for European titles to hanging around the bottom of the standings.
These are ten keys to Lim’s decade in Valencia:
1. 8% fewer wins
Until Peter Lim’s arrival at Valencia, the Mestalla club had won 1,766 of its 3,701 official matches, 47.72%. Out of every hundred games, they had won 48. However, that percentage has dropped to 39.75%, eight points less than in the previous 95 years. Since his first match against Elche, on October 25, 2014, he has won 188 of the 473 he has played, a figure that includes Marcelino’s time, with whom Valencia won 55 of the 110 matches he coached.
2. Sports divestment
The large outlay during the first five years of the Singaporean tycoon, with signings such as Rodrigo Moreno, André Gomes, Aymen Abdennour, Álvaro Negredo and, above all, Gonçalo Guedes, has turned into disinvestment during the last five years. Between the summers of 2020 and 2021, the great pillars of the squad that won the 2019 Cup, the last success, emerged. Players who are important right now in European football, such as Dani Parejo or the South Korean Kangin Lee, were let out for free.
The biggest transfer this past summer was the one paid for Luis Rioja, which did not reach a million and a half euros, while the departure of Giorgi Mamardashvili, still on loan, for 30 million euros was carried out. Already in previous summers the balance was clearly positive with sales such as those of Guedes and Carlos Soler.
3. Losses of 187.4 million euros in a decade
Despite this positive balance in recent years, Valencia de Meriton has accumulated a deficit of 187.4 million euros in this decade of the club (without knowing the data for the 2023-24 season). This has forced the largest shareholder to invest 160 million euros in capital increases, which has led him to go from the 70.4% majority shareholding he had upon his arrival to the current 91.5%.
4. From third in the historical classification to fighting to not lose fourth
In October 2014, Valencia accumulated 3,253 points in the historical LaLiga classification, 40 more than Atlético de Madrid, whom it had surpassed to be the third team in the historical LaLiga classification behind Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. However, the erratic sports management of the club and the success of Atlético meant that in 2016 they overtook him again. In fact, Valencia is now fighting to stay fourth but has 3,761 points, only nine more than Athletic.
5. Five years without Europe
Valencia has accumulated 1,688 days without playing in European competition, an anomaly in the last 35 years of the club. The Mestalla entity has only experienced two worse streaks than this one, since between 1983 and 1989 and with a relegation to the Second Division in between, it spent 2,373 days without playing in Europe, and between 1972 to 1978 it went 2,135 days without doing so.
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6. Break Valencia’s continental dynamics
Of the last 27 seasons, Valencia entered Europe in nineteen of them. However, of the eight in which it has not obtained a ticket to compete in any European competition, seven have been with Meriton Holdings as the largest shareholder.
7. Disappeared from the UEFA ranking
Eighth in the UEFA ranking in 2014 ahead of Arsenal, Porto, Milan, Borussia Dortmund and Inter, Valencia is no longer in a table in which there are eleven Spanish teams among the top one hundred and a total of 427 clubs. This ranking is based on each team’s coefficient in European competitions over the last four seasons, as well as this upcoming one.
8. Marcelino, fired
The last coach who made Valencia operate stably and at a high level in this decade was Marcelino García Toral. His duo with Mateu Alemany, general director, translated into 55 victories in 110 games, the conquest of the 2019 Cup and two qualifications for the Champions League. Of course, they did it by raising the cost of the workforce to a maximum.
9. A negative data machine
There are numerous negative data during Lim’s stay at Mestalla, almost all of them from the second five years. From the worst defeat in their history in the Cup, with the embarrassing 7-0 they received at the hands of Barça, to the second worst streak of consecutive games without winning (12) or having gone 21 games with a single defeat. But also the fifteen coaches that the team has had in this time
10. Positive data, with a dropper
It is much more difficult to find in this decade a sporting figure that represents the best for Valencia in its history, among them are the 77 points that the team achieved in that first 2014-15 campaign with Nuno Espirito Santo on the bench.
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