“Farewell and adieu, to you Spanish ladies…” Who doesn’t relish Robert Shaw’s astounding performance as the snarky and drunken shark-hunter Quint? Hum along the song with me while we recall the last days of a management system that has prevailed in Valencia CF for more than 25 years… and that ended yesterday.
After Valverde gave us the short end of the stick, fans were divided amongst those outraged by Txingurri’s less-than-stellar review of his six-month experience inside the club, and those that were too shocked by Valverde’s exit and couldn’t see a reckoning for such a big disappointment. Though this week’s shock-value seemingly has been consumed by a TV show –‘Game of Thrones’– and a little song called ‘The Rains of Castamere’, if you catch my drift.
But I digress. Maybe the events that took place in the so-called ‘Red Wedding’ were traumatic enough, but luckily yesterday’s VCF Shareholders Meeting was a much more placid endeavor. Less bloody, at least. We plodded through a couple of odd and tense moments, with some of their protagonists seemingly pulled straight out of a Monty Python film, but the initial attitude towards the meeting changed drastically towards the end of it. Most of the crowd wanted to express their discomfort –in other words, boo loudly and bash their speeches- towards the resigned Board of Directors. Four hours later, after an armistice thought by former president Jaume Orti and proverbially signed by Vicente Andreu and Amadeo Salvo, people were keen to give Salvo and his buddies a shot at solving Valencia’s financial problems.
A chapter was closed last weekend after Valverde’s refusal and the resignation of the Board of Directors. Yesterday, Valencia started rewriting its own history, with Amadeo Salvo managing the club outside the pitch and Serbian former player Miroslav Djukic doing the same thing inside it as the teams new manager. Djukic will be the man responsible to pick up the shattered pieces of a broken team –after the tough loss last Saturday against Sevilla and the appaling performance of referee Clos Gómez– and try and achieve a stunning success grabbing a spot towards the 2014-2015 Champions League.
Salvo and Djukic are, right now, Valencia’s present. A bright one if things work nicely. Meanwhile, Llorente, Andreu and Valverde are all words that belong to the past. And Valencia fans must leave them behind while humming that pirate-like melody: “Farewell and adieu…”
Paco Polit (@pacopolit)
Sports – VLC NEWS