Gary Neville’s appointment as Valencia CF manager caused some surprise across Europe on Wednesday, as the ex-Manchester United full-back was named as Los Che’s Head Coach until the end of this current season.
Neville is a hugely respected and award winning pundit in England with Sky Sports, where his blend of brutal honesty, sharp wit, tactical intelligence and brilliance at communicating have been celebrated by both those within football and by the man on the street.
That he should end up in a top job at one of European football’s premier clubs is not a surprise. The surprise was that he got a top job so early. His coaching experience so far has revolved around being Roy Hodgson’s assistant with the England National Team (as well as the occasional work for Salford City). Although this provides him access to work with good quality players and coach them in international tournaments, it is very different to working in a club environment, in a foreign league, with limited language skills.
Could Valencia be a poisoned chalice for Gary Neville?
Valencia is a wonderful city, rich in history and full of charm. Its mixture of modernity and tradition will undoubtedly appeal to Neville, who comes across as being a guy with a solid set of principles but able to embrace the moving times of change. What he will find in Valencia though is a football club moving through yet another period of transition.
Peter Lim’s arrival as owner of Valencia in May 2014 had been long awaited. Ex-president Amadeo Salvo, having identified the Singaporean as a potentially serious investor, began negotiations between Lim and the club’s main creditors, Bankia, in winter 2013. The club had struggled financially for the best part of a decade, with the yearly merry-go-round of the best players leaving to keep the club afloat, and cheaper, younger, replacements arriving. In the face of this financial adversity Valencia had managed to keep results up, with then coach Unai Emery finishing third for three consecutive seasons, consolidating Valencia’s position as a Champions League club and the third club in Spain behind Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Following his resignation on Sunday, outgoing Coach, Nuno Espírito Santo, said that Valencia’s problems were “social not sporting”. Part of Neville’s challenge will be to get a Mestalla full of passionate fans and the Valencia public to believe in him and back the team. A positive will be that he is not a client of the super agent, Jorge Mendez.
Mendez has previously stood accused of having too much influence at certain clubs. His close friendship with Lim came under scrutiny after the summer transfer window saw a number of Mendez players arrive in Valencia for what fans and pundits considered to be inflated transfer fees. The Lim-Mendez-Nuno triumvirate eventually became poisonous, with Nuno taking the brunt of the fans’ ire. Whilst Neville is a business associate of Lim (the two are co-owners of Salford City FC), he is not yet tarred by the same brush as Nuno, who is a client of Mendez.
One thing that will help the transition for Neville is the presence of his younger brother, Phil. Phil Neville became an assistant manager to Nuno in the summer and has been credited locally for having made an admirable effort to integrate with Spanish life and to learn the language. He is popular with the players and will be a very helpful and trustworthy aide to his brother.
The Valencia public are notoriously difficult to please so it must be some relief that his first game in charge will not be this weekend’s clash with table-topping Barcelona. However, his first match at the helm will be a tricky final Champions League qualifying tie against Lyon of France: a game they must win to move into the knockout phase of the competition.
This is an excellent opportunity for Neville to gain some top level management experience and the short term nature of his initial contract does reduce the internal pressure on him to worry about the long term future of the club. This means he can concentrate on doing his best to motivate and coach the players at his disposal. He has a talented squad of mainly young and hungry players and his tremendous analytical and communication skills should be well received.
As many ex-managers of Valencia will attest to – Neville being the 14th manager in the past decade – the pressure will come from the high and at times unrealistic expectations of the crowd. His relationship with Lim may not be an issue for now, but it could surface over time if results and performances don’t go his way.
