These plucky Frogs have gone from paupers to princes
THURSDAY’S Europa League match at Fir Park deserves the title of The Resurrection special. Not long after Motherwell’s prudent husbandry ushered them out of administration to start a bountiful run of European participation and a Champions League debut, Spain’s professional players needed to stage a benefit match at the end of the season so that Levante’s staff could be paid.
There was a time when this relatively modest club, which tries to get elbow room in their home city with the mighty Valencia, ran up €40million (£31.5m) debts. Players had to sell their homes, their cars and send their wives and children back home if they were foreigners because only a tiny fraction of wages were being met over a two-year period.
The Frogs (they are nicknamed that because their old stadium used to be by the riverbed and was often overrun by a biblical plague of the little amphibians) were relegated, very nearly disappeared and then had the good fortune to be taken over by a smart, hard-nosed young businessman called Quico Catalan.
Under his reign Levante have muscled their way out of the second division, stayed in the top league on the last day of the penultimate season and then shocked Spain by hovering in the Champions League places for 90 per cent of last term despite having, by far, the lowest expenditure of any team, a side with an average age over 30 and moderate attendances.
Time, age, injuries and the Falcao-inspired surge of Atletico Madrid at the death of last term robbed them of that Champions League dream, but here they are making their UEFA debut in Lanarkshire.
Their great skill over the last three years has been selecting two exceptional young coaches, Luis Garcia (now of Getafe) and Juan Ignacio Martinez, plus making a string of exceptionally clever and cheap signings of (extremely) veteran players. On which basis you may like the fact that their football director’s name translates directly as Manuel Saviour.
Last year, their back five had a total age of 170 (youngest 31, oldest 36), the star of which was Sergio Ballesteros. In these pages a few months ago, I pointed out that he is 6ft 2in with a frame and face which make him look like a nightclub bouncer. His official entry on the club website claims he’s just under 15 stone — but there have been times over the last two seasons when you could comfortably estimate there are umpteen extra pounds under his billowing Levante shirt.
Yet despite his pensionable age for a central defender (he’ll be 37 in a couple of weeks) and ‘comfortable’ size, Ballesteros outsprinted Cristiano Ronaldo during the club’s remarkable victory over Madrid (whose only other defeat was to Barcelona), having already put in a full 90 minutes. One of the YouTube videos of that moment has half a million hits. ‘People can call me ugly, fine, but I’m not slow and I never have been,’ he says.
Ballesteros remains but, because revenue is scarce and times are tight, there has been a significant turnover in playing staff. Two important defenders, Javi Venta and Asier del Horno, have gone, as have three key midfielders, Farinos Ruben Suarez and Xavi Torres, while up front there won’t be the goals of Valdo or Arouna Kone.
Manuel the Saviour has spent €650,000 (£500,000) on adding Theo Gekas up front, Pape Diop (a thumping big presence in midfield) from Racing, Pedro Rios from Getafe, former Bayern Munich full-back Christian Lell and several others while selling two players they got for free, Torres and Kone, for €6.5m (£5m). Good business.
Martinez, whose initials mean he’s universally known as JIM, admits: ‘If you compare it to shopping, we’re the guys who only buy clothes when the sales are on and we only take from the racks which have sizes which don’t fit anyone else.’
Do Motherwell have a chance? Well, at first glance a team capable of beating Real Madrid and fighting all season for fourth place in Spain need to start as favourites. But it is Levante’s first tie in Europe, only their second competitive match of the season, half their team are newly signed — who knows, fortune may just favour the brave.