Valencia and Pizzi are after a slice of success

Argentine has returned to the Spanish club as coach, and supporters expect a Uefa Champions League spot, writes Andy Mitten.

Valencia’s new Argentinian coach Juan Antonio Pizzi. AFP

Regardless of Valencia’s financial instability, fans of Los Che were familiar with stability on the pitch. Valencia have not finished outside Spain’s top 10 since 1988’s 14th-place finish.

Only Barcelona and Real Madrid have bettered them for consistency this century, with Valencia the last team to win the title outside of the big two. They also finished third for three years in succession between 2010 and 2012, which clubs outside the big two consider as winning Spain’s “other league”. At least it was until Atletico Madrid gatecrashed the duopoly this season.

After dismissing manager Unai Emery, the man who led Valencia to those finishes, in 2012, Spain’s third club in the respected all-time league table quickly discovered the grass was not greener.

The former player Mauricio Pellegrino took over and lasted 15 games before he was dismissed with his team in 11th place. Ernesto Valverde replaced him. An excellent coach, Valverde led them up the table, narrowly missing a fifth successive Uefa Champions League qualification.

Velverde did not want the job full-time, preferring to take over at his former club, Athletic Bilbao, where he is excelling. The same cannot be said of Valencia, who are 11th with 20 points. Selling their best players for years has not helped, but their wage bill remains Spain’s fifth-highest. Not unreasonably, fans expect better.

Valencia replaced Valverde with Valladolid’s Serbian coach, Miroslav Djukic, last July. His abrasive personality did not win favour with the players, nor the poor results and football with the fans. Djukic was dismissed last month, with his side flailing.

Ricardo Costa, the captain, this week criticised Djukic for not demanding the maximum from his players and claimed the methods under Juan Antonio Pizzi, the new coach, are “very good, very intense, with great joy and enthusiasm. We are starting from scratch and all are working fine each day to get the results”.

Pizzi, 45, an Argentine who played for Spain, Barcelona and Valencia, was a popular appointment. He won the Argentinian league with San Lorenzo and brought two assistants with him, yet Valencia’s 35,000 hard-core fans are notoriously hard to please.

They expect Champions League every season and Pizzi is charged with doing what Valverde did and leading them back into Europe.

He has 20 games left and his side are eight points off a Europa League place, 13 from the Champions League.

“We will fight until the final day for the 40 more points we need for the Champions League positions. Valencia is always looking for those positions,” Costa said.

They are still alive in this season’s Europa League, where they face Dynamo Kiev in the knock-out stage. And after scraping past third-division Nastic Tarragona over two legs, they remain in the last 16 of the Copa del Rey, where they face holders Atletico Madrid.

Atletico defeated them 3-0 in a December league game, which was marred by off-field violence when Valencia hooligans threw a smoke grenade into a bar packed with Atletico fans.

Seventy-two fans were denied access to the stadium and sent back to Valencia, with Spain’s anti-violence committee proposing €4,500 (Dh22,500) fines and 12-month stadium bans for each of the offenders.

Valencia do not want radical fans besmirching their name. They do that themselves, with financial troubles amounting to €263 million in debt to the Bankia bank. The Singaporean businessman Peter Lim is the latest figure to be linked with a takeover at the Mestalla and Amadeo Salvo, the club president, said that Lim has made an offer, which Bankia are considering. They have until January 15 to make a decision.

Lim reportedly has set aside €50m to spend on new players, with Manchester City’s Edin Dzeko linked to a move, but fans have grown tired of similar pronouncements. Lim made an unsuccessful bid for Liverpool in 2010.

Pizzi’s first game is tonight, a city derby at home to a Levante side who have also picked up 20 points. It is the first of four winnable league games, with Celta Vigo, Malaga and Espanyol to follow, before Valencia play Barcelona away at the start of February.

Not that anything goes to plan when following Valencia.