Valencia basketball is happy. The fans have stopped caring about his absence in the semi-finals of the ACB League against Unicaja because the club announced this Wednesday – in a very cinematic way: with a video on social networks with historical images of the team and that Oscar gala in the one in which Penélope Cruz announced to Pedro Almodóvar with a shout – that Pedro Martínez returns, the coach who made Valencia Basket champion of the League for the first and only time in its history. That was in 2017 and, after some disagreement, the Catalan coach left the entity days later. Now he returns after another failed project to elevate a team that has, beyond sports, a pressing mission ahead: to fill the Roig Arena, the lavish pavilion with more than 15,000 spectators in which Juan Roig, owner of the club, president of Mercadona and sports patron, has spent 280 million euros and that will be his new fiefdom from the 25-26 season. The countdown is on.
One more challenge for a club that once again reached the playoffs and that said goodbye again, as almost always (twenty times it has fallen in the first round and only eight times managed to advance), in the quarterfinals. This is usually his limit, with few exceptions, such as the successful season of Pedro Martínez, who will turn 62 in a month and who last January became the second coach, after Aíto García Reneses, to reach the thousand games in the ACB (debuted on March 6, 1990). This milestone was achieved at Baxi Manresa, a team where he has been since 2019 and which he has left in the playoffs for the title (they lost to Unicaja 2-0).
Some things have changed in La Fonteta since the Catalan left. Chechu Mulero, fired last summer, is no longer there, the sports director with whom he failed to reach an agreement to renew in 2017. Now his bosses will be Luis Arbalejo, the new sports manager, and Enric Carbonell, the young general director who does not give up in its efforts to reverse the trend of a club that is struggling to find its way despite having one of the highest budgets in the ACB. His last bet was Álex Mumbrú, which didn’t work either. Like many other Spanish coaches, good coaches, who were diluted in Valencia, a complex place where Pedro Martínez did triumph, to whom the fans allow him to ‘sit’ in the popular imagination next to the late Miki Vukovic, the Maestro, the coach who He returned Pamesa to the ACB, which led them to win the 1998 Copa del Rey with a modest squad and was the first to manage to fill the Fonteta regularly.
That, bringing together an abundant social mass, is a priority objective for Carbonell and, by extension, it will also be for Pedro Martínez, who replaces Xavi Albert in office, who, in turn, replaced at the end of the season Alex Mumbrú. Albert, a 36-year-old rookie in the ACB, has a very good profile and knows the house thoroughly – he has been a player and coach in different categories – he will be the shadow, to help and to soak up his knowledge, of the head coach.
Valencia does not forget that 2017 title, but neither does the extraordinary play of that team that had players like Sam Van Rossom, Guillem Vives, Rafa Martínez, Fernando San Emeterio, Joan Sastre or Bojan Dubjlevic. Valencia Basket knocked down Real Madrid in a final in which they probably achieved the best version in their history. The fans do not forget that great defense and the ball flying quickly from hand to hand.
That is why the promoter in charge of the construction of the Roig Arena is called Licampa 1617, an acronym for Pamesa Champion League (the previous name of the club, when the sponsor was the tile company of Fernando Roig, brother of Juan, previous president of the basketball team and current boss of Villarreal in football) and from 2016-2017, a nod to that Pedro Martínez team that made history in Valencia. The club, for all this, seems to want to close a circle with the return of the coach who took them to their highest point.
Valencia Basket still hopes to receive a place in the next Euroleague and that will determine the creation of a squad that has no room for error if it wants to leave La Fonteta through the front door to settle in where Víctor Sendra, manager of Licampa 1617 , assures that it will be “the most spectacular arena in Spain and Europe.” A facility with sporting and cultural aspirations – in the style of the WiZink Center – that according to the Valencian Institute of Economic Research (Ivie) will have an impact on the local economy of more than 10 million euros annually.
This arena is the result of the words of Juan Roig, who uttered a lapidary phrase years ago: “When Fonteta becomes too small, I will build a new pavilion.” The Valencian businessman laid the first stone in June 2020, three years after winning the League, in an act that was also a symbol to demonstrate that, despite the pandemic, the world continued and he continued to generate employment and contribute. to Valencia, his city. Sendra and his team visited the best arenas in the world. From the O2 in London to the Uber Berlin – home of the last Euroleague Final Four –, passing through the Accor in Paris or the Warriors’ Chase Center in San Francisco. In addition to other American cities such as Los Angeles, Detroit, Las Vegas… The works are progressing at a good pace and the skeleton of the new arena is already visible behind L’Alqueria del Basket, another facility dedicated to basketball, to the Valencia Basket quarry , which cost 18 million and was also financed by Roig. It is expected that the works will be completed in 2025 and that the capacity will be 15,500 spectators for basketball and 18,600 for large concerts – there will be smaller rooms for other types of shows. Many seats to fill.
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