Valencia Fans Pitch In to Help Right the Club’s Woes

As has been well doc­u­mented over the past few sea­sons, Valen­cia CF have seen bet­ter days.  A dis­mal 10th place fin­ish in 2008 was fol­lowed by a respectable, but still dis­ap­point­ing 6th place fin­ish in 2009.  On the field, a love hate rela­tion­ship with David Villa, spats with Quique Sánchez Flo­res,  the epic flop of one Ronald Koe­man and a res­ig­na­tion by for­mer club pres­i­dent Juan Soler have turned Valen­cia into a real life telen­ov­ela, minus the beau­ti­ful Span­ish debutantes.

With all of the tri­als and tribu­la­tions Valen­cia have faced on the pitch, their woes lie in the absolute Mount Ever­est of debt the club has racked up.  In June 2008 the club was in the hole to the tune of EUR 502 mil­lion and was forced to stop con­struc­tion on the New Mestalla in Feb­ru­ary, thanks to the bust of real-estate and con­struc­tion mar­kets in Spain.  The club also fell behind on pay­ments to David Villa and David Silva, Valencia’s biggest stars.  The debt has forced the club to con­sider sell­ing it’s new sta­dium for EUR 300 mil­lion to help repay it’s creditors.

To avoid admin­is­tra­tion, Valen­cia was forced to raise some seri­ous cap­i­tal, and turned to their loyal fans for sup­port.  Accord­ing to VCF Chair­man Tar­silo Piles, Valen­cia raised EUR 18 mil­lion by sell­ing shares of the club to fans for EUR 48.05 a piece.  Piles said  “The inter­est of the foun­da­tion is to democ­ra­tize the club so that we do not end up in the same sit­u­a­tion as before and also so no one has a large enough piece to con­trol the entire club.”

Valencia’s Assets

The largest assets to a major­ity of foot­ball clubs lie with it’s play­ers and Valen­cia is no dif­fer­ent.  David Villa has been rumored to come with a EUR 60 mil­lion price tag, but recent reports say Villa will stay put in Valen­cia after the club looked abso­lutly ridicu­lous this off-season with a foot­balling ver­sion of ‘He Loves Me’  (we want him, we want him not, we wan’t him…).

Reports in May placed David Silva at around EUR 45 mil­lion when he was rumored to be head­ing to Anfield to reunite with for­mer Valen­cia skip­per, Rafa Ben­itez.  At the same time, reports had Valen­cia offer­ing a stag­ger­ing GBP 135 mil­lion block­buster deal to Man­ches­ter City for the duo.  Yes, that was to Man City and it could have been for GPB 300 mil­lion the way the papers report it, but you get the idea.

The club could also look to offload highly touted Ever Banega, who never mate­ri­al­ized at Valen­cia and was off on loan at Atletico Madrid until the start of this sea­son.  He was out of place his entire stay at the club.   Valen­cia paid EUR 18 mil­lion for Banega back in 2008 and he quickly gained noto­ri­ety for his exploits in the home­made porno indus­try, or as Banega him­self titled, Banega, Always Big (I’ll leave the intre­pre­ta­tion to you). Banega was set to go to Stuttgart for GBP 7.5 mil­lion, but a rough patch between Unai Emery and VP Fer­nando Gomez has seemed to derail the train for now.

A New Hope

Reports say Valen­cia have been approved for a new loan backed by the Gen­er­al­i­tat, Valencia’s regional gov­ern­ment, from Ban­caja for 74 mil­lion euros that will be repaid from the pro­ceeds of a fur­ther share sale.  With the new influx of money, the club will rely heav­ily on sea­son ticket hold­ers to come through and renew.  Valen­cia have always had a strong socio base and last sea­son more than 9,000 renewed their sea­son tick­ets even before the 2009 sea­son came to a close.

Valen­cia will also need to cash in on their appear­ance in the newly formed Europa League.  An impres­sive fin­ish in the Europa League would leave the club with an influx of cash they can use to repay some of the club’s out­stand­ing debt, and restruc­ture for the future.  Below is the rubric for $$ for the UEFA Europa League in 2009/2010.  If Valen­cia rack up some wins and move on, they can have a sig­nif­i­cant amount of money into the club, as well as the increase in gate rev­enue for the Europa League matches at home and any shared gate dur­ing away matches.

UEFA Europa League 2009/2010:
1st qual­i­fy­ing round: 90.000 €
2nd qual­i­fy­ing round: 90.000 €
3rd qual­i­fy­ing round: 90.000 €
Play­offs: 90.000 €
Group stage: 1.000.000 €
Group match vic­tory: 140.000 €
Group match draw: 70.000 €
1st knock out round: 200.000 €
2nd knock out round: 300.000 €
Quarter-finals: 400.000 €
Semi-finals: 700.000 €
Final: 2.000.000 €
Win­ning the final: 1.000.000 €

What do you think of the club’s future?  Will ticket sales and sell­ing shares keep the club’s head above water, or are they just avoid­ing the inevitable? Is there any­way else for the club to raise the nec­es­sary funds to avoid administration?

Tagged as: David Silva, David Villa, Ever Banega, Juan Soler, La Liga, valencia, Valencia CF