MESTALLA MISERY

Valencia won two Ligas, the UEFA Cup and reached two Champions League finals at the turn of the century, but a half-built stadium, Gary Neville in the dugout and Peter Lim's toxic ownership threaten Los Che's very existence

- Marcus Alves

Back in late February, Fabio Aurelio returned to former club Valencia for several days, to check on one of his clients. Now an agent, the former left-back won two La Liga titles and the 2003-04 UEFA Cup with the Spanish giants, before rejoining manager Rafa Benitez at Liverpool two years after that continental success.

Going back to the city where his greatest triumphs occured, the Brazilian couldn’t help but feel a bit melancholic every time he looked through his hotel room window at the modern Avenida de las Cortes Valencianas.

“It’s kind of sad, you know?” Aurelio tells FourFourTwo a few weeks later. “You draw back the curtains and there it is, right in front of you, that big monument, static, nothing much happening around it, no real life. You look from the outside and think that the stadium is finished, but no. No one can really say if that day will ever come.

“So, damn, it’s sad because you’ve lived there and know that city. The club and the supporters deserve a stadium like that.”

With a planned capacity of up to 80,000, Nou Mestalla was destined to take Valencia into a new era when construction began in 2007. Instead, work was paused within two years due to a lack of funds, turning a half-built arena into a white elephant that epitomises the club’s myriad problems. Having previously aimed to re-establish themselves at the top of European football, Los Che are now at real risk of La Liga relegation for the first time since 1986. It wasn’t supposed to be like this...

THE HITMAN AND HIM