Valencia are going through yet another painful crisis and this time both the manager and the President have seem to be up a heavy stump. Valencia are closer to the relegation zone than to a UEFA Champions League place and Ronald Koeman’s idea to banish three senior pros of the club for flimsy reason is haunting them.
Sky Sports reports that disgruntled and visibly bemused David Albelda, the captain of Valencia till mid-December, has demanded the club to tell him why they are not letting him go to another club. Albelda, Santiago Canizares and Miguel Angel Angulo, all veterans of the club, were kicked out of the team by Koeman late last month. All three have been told that they’ll never wear the Valencia shirt again and it appears that President Juan Soler is determined to see that the trio do not don any other club’s shirt either.
Albelda says that he has been told that he wouldn’t be sold unless the recruiting club meets his buy-out clause which is whooping €60 million. Fulham manager Roy Hodgson has expressed his interest in signing Albelda but obviously the Premiership strugglers cannot rack up the millions that Valencia demand.
Albelda told EFE:
The coach and the technical staff in general have not looked at me and have undervalued me since December 18, I do not deserve what they are doing to me and the truth is that I do not know the reason and I would like to. The fans also have the right to know about the reasons as so much has been said and speculated about. I just hope they do explain. I renewed with Valencia and turned down higher offers to stay here with my hometown club. I do not know about all the other stuff, I just know that when clubs have come in to ask about me they have been told me buy-out clause price. I just want to play football and the coach and the president are stopping. Every day they are making my life more impossible and forcing me out of the club.
Valencia are a club with good resources and perhaps the only club in La Liga who can challenge the Real Madrid-FC Barcelona duopoly in the long run. Yet they have consistently been failed by their erratic and insane boardroom tactics.