MENDIETA STILL MAKING THE MOST OF MANY TALENTS
Valencia icon reflects on famous tie with Rangers en route to the Champions League final
GAIZKA MENDIETA spends so much of his time looking forwards, that it almost seems an imposition to ask him to cast his glance back the way.
As a DJ, restaurateur, broadcaster and recent graduate from a UEFA course in football administration, his diary has never been fuller. He likes it that way, better to be busy than to sit watching the walls close in. It is a Tuesday afternoon; the sound of traffic and birdsong fills the London air as Mendieta discusses his daily regime.
“In general,” he says, chuckling in between pauses in an admittedly lengthy list, “there have been a lot of phonecalls, Zooms, Skypes, online meetings, La Liga is starting [again] this week so there have been interviews, Instagrams, Facebooks, and social media in general and because of [the restaurant] businesses we are busy these days restructuring, rescheduling, planning etc. I’m quite busy to be honest. I’m trying to do exercise as well, to keep physically and mentally as healthy as possible. Then there is the music. Sometimes days go too fast. I’m shattered, but I prefer it that way. I’m lucky enough to have a routine, something to look forward to.”
But it is the past we drift to. It is 20 years since Valencia reached the first of two, back-to-back Champions League finals. Back then he was a matador spearing the big beasts of Europe with incisive passes and rasping finishes and, of course, the most clinical of penalties.
In full flow, Hector Cuper’s pioneers were a fearsome proposition, a white blanket that smothered opponents, playing a pressing style before it became de rigueur. Leading the way, with his wispy blond hair and swashbuckling style was Mendieta, part-surfer dude, part-conquistador; he says he was allowed
“to explore” on the pitch because he never forgot his responsibilities. In doing so he and his team-mates – Kily Gonzalez, Claudio Lopez, Mauricio Pellegrino and all – almost conquered a continent, even if Cuper, an Argentine with strict ideas about the defensive side of the game, winced when he went on his travels.
On their way to that first Champions League final in 2000, Valencia opened their tournament against Rangers – they would ultimately top a group that also included Bayern Munich and PSV Eindhoven – but it was that initial encounter, a 2-0 win in the Mestalla against Dick Advocaat’s side, that would set the tone.
They had entered the tie with the Scottish press making unfavourable comparisons to Aberdeen. Valencia lost four of their first five games, a run that would ultimately cost them the La Liga title, instead they finished third, five points adrift of Real Madrid.
He struggles to recall the exact reasons for their travails but ascribes it to the general settling-in period that accompanies all new managerial appointments of which he experienced many, including Guus Hiddink, Luis Aragones and Claudio Ranieri before Cuper’s arrival.
“I think it was the transition from different styles under a new manager. Something similar happened with Ranieri. With Cuper, because of his [different] way and what we were used to, there was a period of adaptation for both. But eventually we clicked and I think we managed to get to that point where we were very comfortable with him.”
“I remember it because it was our first time in the Champions League,” he recalls of a campaign that started in the autumn of 1999. “In the first game we played Rangers at home and it was an incredible atmosphere. We played very well. The return game was at Ibrox and the atmosphere was incredible again. The game itself was very exciting. [At half-time] there was a two-goal difference but it felt like it was 0-0 [laughing] because of the way they were playing and the way the fans were behind them, it was incredible.”
BY the time of that second match, Valencia had still to fully find their stride. It was late October and Rangers came out to attack but the early glimpses of what would become a relentless machine were in evidence as Valencia repelled and then overturned their opponents. With Rangers on the front foot, Mendieta had given the Spanish side the lead with a skelp of his left boot. Drifting inside Tony Vidmar to connect with a cross from the Italian fullback Amadeo Carboni, he felt sure he was going to miss due
There was a two-goal difference but it felt like 0-0