The cake is a lie

Five months. Five long months since my last rant. Looking back at its content, it’s bloody premonitory about what has finally happened. Valencia has turned into a looney land over the last half year. A madhouse. Fans have turned absolutely bonkers after being showered with a mix of hope, anger, good news, bad news, puppeteering and halfed baked attempts of concluding our particular never-ending story.

It seemed, a month ago, that Peter Lim’s buyout of the largest stakeholding share from the VCF Foundation’s hands was a matter of days. Then, it became a matter of weeks. Right now, more than one month later, some people begin to get nervous because of this shady affaire. It’s incredibly tricky to explain this whole mess to our English-based readers (I guess most of you are abroad taking a peek at Valencia CF’s current buyout process), but I think it’s worth a shot.

Basically, twenty two individuals (all of them patrons belonging to the VCF Foundation’s board of directors) decided unanimously last May 17th that Singaporean tycoon Peter Lim’s offer was the better of the five groups who bid for the club’s ownership. Then, Lim had to negotiate extensively with Bankia the refinancing of the 230 million € debt the club owes to the bank. They announced an understanding three weeks ago. Valencian government (who hopes to get back the 4,8 million it lent to the club) obliges and accepts everything.

Therefore, where’s the catch? Now the write-up of the buyout contracts is taking place… and some of the initial conditions offered by Lim apparently aren’t being fulfilled. Some of the patrons are doubting if they should endorse or not their initial voting of Lim as the better option. The write-up is going slower than expected because of the contract’s tricky nature. Meanwhile, Valencia is frozen in the sports managing area, with Pizzi on his way out (the new owner prefers newcomer Nuno, with little experience as manager) and Rufete and Salvo on a difficult spot after learning that Portuguese star agent Jorge Mendes is going to amass lots of power on the decisions taken inside the club.

And then, we have the cake. That sweet, sweet cake that Peter Lim’s daughter, Kim, showed us last weekend via her Instagram profile. Many took that picture as irrefutable proof that the Singaporean tycoon is going to fulfill his buyout intentions. That nothing can go wrong now onwards. But hours ago, poor Kim erased the picture. We can only guess her motivations. She jumped the gun early, maybe? Or was she overtaken by the hundreds of comments made by Valencia fans, begging her father to come to Valencia as soon as possible and build one of the biggest teams in the world?

Remember that tight game, ‘Portal’, where all the metaphysical comment lived within that simple and short sentence? “The cake is a lie” has been since used as a metaphor for different situations where all the efforts made to achieve a goal distract us from the real stakes at play. The city has become a battleground between hooligan-like fans that attack those who doubt Peter Lim’s credibility, and those who do not want Lim as the new owner. The media has also become involved in this bloodbath. In the middle, the largest share of ‘aficionados’ and journalist who strive to dogde the bullets.

Kim’s cake came and went, but the taste remains. Until the buyout is completed and Lim is the new owner (I can’t believe the process will be shot down a few meters from the finish line after eight long months of negotiations), that’s one of the few things we can say without hesitating. Sadly, speculation and fighting  will go on for a long time. The proverbial cake will keep being a lie.

EDIT: The cake came back a couple hours after this rant was posted. Thanks for reading, Kim!

 

Paco Polit (@pacopolit)

VLC NEWS – Sports

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