Rubén Baraja came out after the game against Las Palmas and asked that everything not burn down without realizing that he was saying it in the middle of a big fire. Mestalla had been burning for a while. The coach begged the fans to forget everything and encourage the team, and he did so after losing against the bottom team in a stadium with 42,500 people on a Monday at nine at night. More than 40,000 fans who arrived home at midnight on a weekday to support Valencia. An almost full stand to see a dubious spectacle between the penultimate and the last classified in LaLiga. And Baraja begged for support.
Valencia has won a game in six months. There are several culprits and various causes. Peter Lim, the owner who has not set foot in Mestalla or given his opinion for years, is the center of Valencian anger. On Monday there were protests against his management before, during and after the game. The police had to attack the hundreds of fans who were stationed in front of the main entrance of the stadium with the threat of assault the VIP box shouting “you’re not going to come out”. The people, snubbed, fed up with the decline of a historic club, double League champion at the beginning of the century, insulted the property and entire Singapore after a newly married couple was detained for several days in the Asian country for waving a flag with the infamous Lim, go home (Lim, go home) and leave a sticker with the same motto on the door of one of the businessman’s homes.
There were also insults against the representative of Meriton and Lim in Valencia, the president Layhoon Chan, the general director, Javier Solís, and the sports director, Miguel Ángel Corona. Only the coach is saved, for now. Rubén Baraja is supported by his status as a Valencia legend for being one of the leaders of that champion team in 2002 and 2004. No one else would have endured a disastrous streak like the one Valencia has dragged on from last season to the present. The balance is devastating: one victory in 17 games (the ten in this League and the last seven in the previous one). Eleven defeats. A streak with only one more negative precedent, that of the year that Valencia was relegated to Second. Not even Diego Armando Maradona, considered a god in Argentina, endured so much in the albiceleste.
Although everything has a limit, and Baraja already confirmed this stormy Monday at Mestalla that he does not have much margin left. Your credit runs out. With the score 1-2, with Valencia already at the mercy of Las Palmas, a team that had not won a game since February, Pipo came out of the bench and made gestures with his arms to ask for the support of the fans. The almost immediate response was a whistle, something unheard of until then in a place where Valladolid people are revered. It is great for the property to have a legend who serves as an umbrella in the face of so much tension and that may be one of the reasons for its continuity.
It doesn’t help either that during the terrible week in which it became known that his star signing, Rafa Mir, had been accused of a crime of sexual assault, Baraja came out and said in a press conference that everyone deserves a second chance and that after of the two games that he had imposed as a punishment on the forward, he would return to the team, and that a few days ago, as if nothing had happened, the coach spoke of an injury to Mir that will mean that he will not reappear “until the second half of the season ”. Nobody has clarified what happened along the way.
The Agrupació de Penyes Valencianistes has made the decision not to make statements while the murky atmosphere continues. Everything is kind of weird in Valencia. But Baraja’s harangue has not gone down well with the fans. “His statements seemed very misguided to me, to be honest. It is not fair to ask for support from a fan that has never been lacking. The players and the coaching staff cannot complain about the support. This is simply the accumulation of many years that Baraja has not endured as we fans have endured. As a legend and Valencia connoisseur it hurts much more. We will never forget what he did as a player, but as a coach, after a very good season and a half, the team has gotten out of hand. A change is needed on the bench,” says Tente, the president of the Peña Valencianista de Campanar.
Another disappointed supporter is Juan Sebastià, upset by Baraja’s statements. “He was wrong. You can’t ask for more from this hobby. I was disappointed with these comments, although it seems to me that they come a little guided from above. It is sad that an idol and an emblem of Valencia lends itself to this. You can’t ask for more from the fans, we have endured too much. The statements are regrettable,” says this man who has been a subscriber since 1986.
