Valencia CF
Valencia Club de Fútbol, S. A. D., commonly referred to as Valencia CF or simply Valencia, is a Spanish professional football club based in Valencia, Spain, that currently plays in La Liga, the top tier of the Spanish league system. Valencia was founded in 1919 and has played its home games at the 49,430-seater Mestalla since its opening in 1923.
Valencia has won seven La Liga titles, eight Copa del Rey titles, one Supercopa de España, and one Copa Eva Duarte. In European competitions, they have won two Inter-Cities Fairs Cups, one UEFA Cup, one UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, two UEFA Super Cups, and one UEFA Intertoto Cup. They have also reached two consecutive UEFA Champions League finals. The IFFHS named World’s Best Club to Valencia in 2004. Valencia were also members of the G-14 group of leading European football clubs and since its end has been part of the original members of the European Club Association.
Five former members of the club have been inducted into the FIFA International Football Hall of Fame, a project dedicated to preserving the memory of important figures in football history. These include Alfredo Di Stéfano, Mario Alberto Kempes, Romário, Jorge Valdano and Didier Deschamps. Valencia also has four personalities in the FIFA 100, its induction taking place in 2004 as part of the centenary celebrations of FIFA's creation. The ches club is the team with the most Zarra Trophy winners, the fourth in the Zamora Trophy and fifth in the Pichichi Trophy at the national level, at the international level it’s the third Spanish team with the most FIFA World Player nominees and the fourth in the Ballon d'Or, it has ten nominations for the Golden Boy Award, one for the 2019 Kopa Trophy with Lee Kang-in and one for the 2024 Yashin Trophy with Giorgi Mamardashvili. It has been included three times in the UEFA Team of the Year, with Santiago Cañizares and Kily González in 2001 and David Villa in 2010, the last repeating in the FIFPro World XI in the same year.
Four Valencia players were part of the Spanish national team that won the 2010 FIFA World Cup: David Villa, who won the Silver Boot as the second-highest scorer, tied with Thomas Müller on five goals and the Bronze Ball as the third best player in the final phase of the championship, Carlos Marchena, David Silva and Juan Mata. Seven of its members have managed to win Olympic Games medals throughout its history: David Albelda and Miguel Ángel Angulo, silver in Sydney 2000; Fabián Ayala, gold in Athens 2004; Éver Banega, gold in Beijing 2008; Carlos Soler, silver in Tokyo 2020; Cristhian Mosquera and Diego López, gold in Paris 2024.
Over the years, the club has achieved a global reputation for their prolific youth academy, or "Acadèmia". Products of their academy include world-class talents such as Miguel Tendillo, Ricardo Arias, Fernando Gómez, Andrés Palop, Javier Farinos, Raúl Albiol, David Albelda, Vicente Rodríguez, Gaizka Mendieta and David Silva. Current stars of the game to have graduated in recent years include Isco, Jordi Alba, Paco Alcácer, Juan Bernat, José Gayà, Carlos Soler, Ferran Torres, Lee Kang-in, Cristhian Mosquera, and Javi Guerra.
Historically one of the biggest clubs in the world in terms of number of associates, with around 50,000 season ticket holders at their peak, the club began to decline in the mid-2010s. Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim acquired the team in 2014.
History
The club was established on 5 March 1919 and officially approved on 18 March 1919, with Octavio Augusto Milego Díaz as its first president; incidentally, the presidency was decided by a coin toss. The club played its first competitive match away from home on 21 May 1919 against Valencia Gimnástico, and lost the match 1–0.Valencia moved into the Mestalla Stadium in 1923, having played its home matches at the Algirós ground since 7 December 1919. The first match at Mestalla pitted the home side against Castellón Castalia and ended in a 0–0 draw. In another match the day after, Valencia won 1–0 against the same opposition. Valencia CF won the Regional Championship in 1923, and was eligible to play in the domestic Copa del Rey cup competition for the first time in its history.
1940s: Emergence as a giant in Spanish football
The Spanish Civil War halted the progress of the Valencia team until 1941, when it won the Copa del Rey, beating RCD Espanyol in the final. In the 1941–42 season, the club won its first Spanish La Liga championship title, although winning the Copa del Rey was more reputable than the championship at that time. The club maintained its consistency to capture the league title again in the 1943–44 season, as well as the 1946–47 league edition. They would conclude their decade of success by winning the 1949 Copa del Rey; this meant Valencia ended the decade with a record of three La Liga and two Copa del Rey titles. This success would help cement the club's name in Spanish football.In the 1950s, Valencia failed to emulate the success of the previous decade, even though it grew as a club. A restructuring of Mestalla resulted in an increase in spectator capacity to 45,000, while the club had a number of Spanish and foreign stars. Players such as Spanish international Antonio Puchades and Dutch forward Faas Wilkes graced the pitch at Mestalla. In the 1952–53 season, the club finished as runners-up in La Liga, and in the following season, won the Copa del Rey, then known as the Copa del Generalísimo.
1960s: European successes in the Fairs Cup
While managing average league form in the early 1960s, Valencia had its first European success in the form of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, defeating Barcelona in the final of the 1961–62 edition. The following edition of the tournament pitted Valencia against Croatian club Dinamo Zagreb in the final, which the Spanish side also won. Valencia reached a third consecutive Inter-Cities Fairs Cup final in the following season, but this time were defeated 2–1 by fellow Spanish club Zaragoza.1970s to early 1980s: More domestic and European glory
Former two-time European Footballer of the Year award winner Alfredo Di Stéfano was hired as Valencia coach in 1970, and immediately inspired his new club to their fourth La Liga championship and first since 1947. This secured Valencia its first qualification for the prestigious European Cup, contested by the various European domestic champions. Valencia reached the third round of the 1971–72 competition before losing both legs to Hungarian champions Újpesti Dózsa. In 1972 the club also finished runners-up both in La Liga and the domestic cup, losing to Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid, respectively. The most notable players of the 1970s era include Austrian midfielder Kurt Jara, forward Johnny Rep of the Netherlands and Argentinian forward Mario Kempes, who was consecutively La Liga top scorer in 1976–77 and 1977–78. Valencia would go on to win the Copa del Rey again in the 1978–79 season, and also capture the European Cup Winners' Cup the next season, after beating English club Arsenal in the final, and the European Super Cup against Nottingham Forest thanks to the away goals rule, with Kempes spearheading their success in Europe.Mid to late 1980s: Stagnation and relegation
In 1982, the club appointed Miljan Miljanić as coach. After a disappointing season, Valencia was in 17th place and faced relegation with seven games left to play. Koldo Aguirre replaced Miljanić as coach, and Valencia barely avoided relegation that year, relying on favorable results from other teams to ensure their own survival. In the 1983–84 and 1984–85 seasons, the club was heavily in debt under the presidency of Vicente Tormo. The club finally hit rock bottom when it was relegated at the end of the 1985–86 season, and riven with internal problems such as unpaid player and staff wages, as well as poor morale. The club was relegated for the first time after 55 years in Spanish top-flight football.Arturo Tuzón was named the new club president, and he helped steer Valencia back to La Liga. Alfredo Di Stéfano returned as coach in 1986 and Valencia won promotion again following the 1986–87 season. Di Stéfano stayed on as coach until the 1987–88 season, when the team finished in 14th position in La Liga. Bulgarian forward Luboslav Penev joined the club in 1989, as Valencia aimed to consolidate their place in La Liga. In the 1988–89 La Liga season, Valencia finished third, which would signal their competitiveness going into the 1990s.
1990s: Re-emergence
In the 1989–90 La Liga season, Valencia finished as runners-up to Real Madrid, and thus qualified for the UEFA Cup.Guus Hiddink was appointed as head coach in the 1991–92 season, and the club finished fourth in the League and reached the quarter-finals of the Copa del Rey. In 1992, Valencia officially became a Sporting Limited Company, and retained Hiddink as their coach until 1993.
Brazilian coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, fresh from winning the 1994 FIFA World Cup with the Brazil national team, became manager at Mestalla in 1994. Parreira immediately signed Spanish goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta, Russian forward Oleg Salenko, and Predrag Mijatović, but failed to produce results expected of him. He was replaced by new coach José Manuel Rielo. The club's earlier successes continued to elude it, although it was not short of top coaching staff like Luis Aragonés and Jorge Valdano, as well as foreign star forwards like Brazilian Romário, Claudio López, Ariel Ortega from Argentina, and Adrian Ilie from Romania. In the 1995–96 La Liga season, Valencia finished second to Atlético Madrid, being unable to capture the title after a close fought race.
Valencia would struggle for the next two seasons, but the 1998–99 La Liga season would signal the start of one of the club's most successful periods in their history; they lifted their first trophy in nineteen years by winning the 1998–99 Copa del Rey under Claudio Ranieri, and also qualified for the UEFA Champions League.