The Battle For The Soul Of Valencia

VALENCIA, SPAIN — “It is like a dictatorship,” Jose Pérez told me. Two coffees, one cortado and one café con leche, were on the table, plus my notebook and a phone to record. Two and a half hours before kick-off, but far less until Pérez, president of fan protest group Libertad VCF (‘Free VCF’), would surely be called away to lead a passionate demonstration against Peter Lim’s ownership of Valencia Club de Fútbol.

It was 19 May, 2024, with Valencia set to take on La Liga’s surprise package, Girona, in their final home match of the 2023–24 season. I had just asked Pérez whether there was anything the club could do to improve its communication, and mend a broken relationship with supporters.

As I ended the question, Pérez, and a fellow Valencianista friend of his who had spotted him in the coffee bar, chuckled. There was a wry smile on the face of both men, and I realised Pérez need not answer; the moment to make peace had long passed, in their view.

The protest of the day was primarily framed as a boycott of Valencia’s Mestalla stadium. Fans were asked by Libertad VCF to remain on the street as the match played on, leaving thousands of seats empty inside, to send a message which “hurts” those in charge, Pérez said. It was to be the second walkout of its kind — the group having successfully campaigned for a boycott in May 2022.

Pérez did respond, in depth and with patience for an uninformed Scottish journalist, eventually using that word ‘dictatorship’ four times. The spark of revolution, impatient to catch afire, had been in the muggy air all afternoon in this relaxed Valencian barrio.

An anticipation of what was to come chipped away at the nervy cheerfulness in fan chatter on Avenida de Suecia, a wide street which Mestalla’s main stand backs onto. With the hum and honking of traffic on Avenida de Blasco Ibañez in one direction and the green tranquillity of Jardí del Túria in the other, the road (which translates as ‘Sweden Avenue’) is an important cog in Valencia’s gridiron street network.
Avenida de Suecia, lined with Valencia fan bars below typically Spanish apartment blocks, also holds a pivotal role in the history of the city’s biggest football club. Not just the legal address of Valencia CF, it has hosted jubilant street parties to celebrate the club’s greatest triumphs, like the La Liga wins of the early 2000s, and a lively crowd welcomes the team bus here every matchday.

On this mid-May afternoon, it was to be the hotbed of the latest fan rebellion. A decade of ownership under Singaporean billionaire Lim had “crushed, shut up and silenced” the Valencia fanbase, Pérez said. With the days of cheering their trophy-winning players on the stadium balcony above long gone, the atmosphere on Avenida de Suecia when the protest later kicked off was volatile and messy — as it has been for countless other recent demonstrations, including the previous Mestalla boycott.

After that headline-making day two years ago, why has nothing changed? “[The boycott] has happened again because they continue killing Valencia Club de Fútbol,” Pérez declared. He is a man who speaks with absolute certainty in his views, determined to transmit an exhaustion felt by many Valencianistas.

“What people in the dark have to understand is this: what would happen at your football club if whoever owned it wasn’t interested in things going well on the pitch?” he continued. “But [Peter Lim] also wasn’t interested in the club doing well financially, and he isn’t interested whether or not the fans are happy either. Instead, he is trampling on us, humiliating us.”

This sentiment is a far cry from the relief-ridden welcome which Lim, a former stockbroker who also has a 40% stake at Salford City, received upon purchasing a majority shareholding in Valencia in May 2014. As is often the case, Avenida de Suecia is the platform which showcases the present emotion of Valencia supporters. Ten years ago, it was there that Lim was greeted by a vast crowd, elated at the prospect of funding from one of Singapore’s richest.

An era of turmoil and high debt was over at Valencia. With Lim on board, supporters expected the club to be bankrolled back towards the heady days of the early 2000s, when Los Ches were briefly the most exciting, and successful, club in the country.

“Valencia are one of the historic teams of Spanish football, so I can totally understand fans’ frustration with the club’s current situation,” The Athletic‘s Junior Spain Editor, Tomás Hill López-Menchero, said. “They’re the fifth-most successful club in Spain by trophies won and supporters and are the only team apart from Atlético Madrid to break Barcelona and Real Madrid’s hold on the La Liga trophy since the 2000-01 season.”

In fact, this memorable period had eventually propelled Valencia to rejoice when Lim’s purchase of the club was confirmed in 2014. Its previous owners, in their quest for continental glory, had attempted to win the UEFA Champions League “at all costs”, Lim told the Financial Times in a rare 2021 interview. That transfer spending, along with a pause on construction of a new stadium on the city outskirts as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, racked up reported debts of €400 million.

The sale to Lim in May 2014, supervised by the Fundación Valencia CF and other club executives whom Pérez refers to as Lim’s “accomplices”, came four years after the Singaporean had bid £320 million for Liverpool Football Club. Amid significant fan opposition to his management of Valencia, Lim described his motivation for sports investment as “something quite nice”.

“I wake up, I own a football club and I see what happens next. It’s nothing more,” he added, speaking to the FT.

Pérez is of the view that Lim’s intentions upon buying Valencia in 2014, which remain relatively unclear, are now known to have been a “trick” and a “lie”.

“It put Valencians in a no-win situation; they were told it was either the sale of the club or the end of the club,” he said. A major grievance held by Libertad VCF, which is shared by most Valencia fans and reflected in coverage from English and Spanish-language media, was the owner’s perceived ambition to quickly begin using the club as means of trading players for profit.

Namely, the beginnings of life under Peter Lim brought varying success, with one strong theme lurking in the shadows throughout – the significant influence of Lim’s long-standing friend Jorge Mendes on the club’s affairs. Mendes, a renowned Portuguese football agent who counts Cristiano Ronaldo and José Mourinho in a long list of elite clients, was central to Valencia’s transfer operations, according to Pérez.

As I asked Pérez about this unconventional relationship and listened to his passionate response, littered with strong criticisms and accusations, it is clearly an issue which Libertad VCF believes to have hurt the club like no other. Mendes’ role, which has never been formally acknowledged by Valencia, alienated many supporters. Business was seen to be conducted for the profit of Lim and Mendes, with the team’s on-pitch stability a secondary thought.

In the summer of 2014, Nuno Espírito Santo, a Mendes client, was appointed Valencia manager by Peter Lim. He led the side to an impressive fourth-place finish, with no less than five fellow GestiFute (Mendes’ football agency service) clients starring for Valencia: João Cancelo, Rúben Vezo, Filipe Augusto, André Gomes and Nicolás Otamendi. The club later received an estimated €120 million for the sales of Cancelo, Gomes and Otamendi.

Pérez asserts that these deals, and many more, have “lined the pockets” of Lim and Mendes. He suggested that, in exchange for influence over the team’s transfer business, the Valencia owner was granted the image rights of Cristiano Ronaldo across Asia by Jorge Mendes.

Lim did purchase these image rights in 2015, as reported by ESPN, with Ronaldo describing the Singaporean as a “good friend”. ‘CR7’ has since backed the Singapore Olympic Foundation Peter Lim Scholarship on social media and the pair co-launched digital platform ZujuGP in 2021. Their launch statement claimed that “you will never see football in the same way again”.

In the years which followed the brief honeymoon spell under Nuno, Valencianistas began to see their football club in a different way.

For instance, Rodrigo – a forward later of Leeds United and the Spanish national team – and the aforementioned Gomes were loaned to Valencia from Benfica for the 2014-15 inaugural campaign of the Lim regime. They were later permanently transferred to the Mestalla side in 2015. However, Marca and SuperDeporte reported that the players’ rights had in fact been bought by Meriton Capital Ltd, Lim’s Hong-Kong based investment company, in January 2014 – five months before their loan moves to Valencia.

Consequently, two of Europe’s most promising young players were owned by Peter Lim, months prior to the billionaire’s purchase of Valencia. Gomes and Rodrigo remained with Benfica until the summer of 2014, when they were curiously ‘assigned’ to Valencia by Lim as loans from Benfica.

Gomes told reporters of his confusion in September 2014 with the takeover yet to be officially completed, despite having already debuted for Valencia, stating “nobody’s told me anything”. He added: “When all is decided we’ll know. If Peter buys Valencia, I’ll be definitively a Valencia player.”

An April 2015 FIFA ruling on third-party ownership in football (defined as “third-party investments in the economic rights of professional football players, potentially in order to receive a share of the value of any future transfers of those players”) largely brought this method of player trading to a swift end. Nevertheless, Mendes’ sway over transactions at the Spanish club has not faded as quickly, and is unlikely to end while agents can still earn sizeable fees from transfers.

Nuno’s stint in charge from July 2014 to November 2015 coincided with an infamous attempt to sign Brazilian defender Rodrigo Caio, under ‘recommendation’ from Jorge Mendes. Despite São Paulo confirming Caio’s move to Valencia, worth €12.5 million, the player failed two medicals and returned to Brazil. Nani, Ezequiel Garay, Gonçalo Guedes, Thierry Correia and Hélder Costa have all since transferred to Valencia, all sharing the same agent.

A further source of frustration for fans during Lim’s decade in control has been the near-constant turnover of managers. This issue, rather than being connected to Mendes (only Nuno and Gennaro Gattuso, Valencia manager from June 2022 to January 2023, were GestiFute clients), has exemplified the eternal power struggle at the Mestalla.

Nuno was famously followed by former Manchester United defender Gary Neville in the Valencia dugout. Neville, a co-owner of England’s Salford City which Lim had also invested in, failed to capture the fans’ support and was sacked in March 2016. Pako Ayestarán, Cesare Prandelli, Marcelino, Albert Celades, Javi Gracia, José Bordalás, Gennaro Gattuso and the incumbent Rubén Baraja have all taken the reigns on a permanent basis since 2016. Only Marcelino and Baraja have taken charge of at least fifty matches, while Valencia stalwart ‘Voro’ was remarkably caretaker manager on five separate occasions. Lim has also burned through a number of sporting directors.

Many of the names listed were relieved of their duties after challenging Lim and other executives’ management of the club. The sacking of popular Copa del Rey-winning coach Marcelino, who has since impressed at Villarreal, along with sporting director Mateu Alemany, was the final straw for most Valencia supporters.

“[The Valencia ownership] aren’t interested if you win a trophy, as we know with the last cup we won,” Pérez said. “Peter Lim didn’t want to win it – he told the manager not to win that cup.”

That shock victory against Barcelona in the 2019 Copa del Rey Final was at once one of the high points of the Lim era and the event which signalled that the end may be nigh. It was the last Valencia side capable of causing such an upset, with all but three members of that eighteen-man squad having now departed.

While the beginning of Lim’s ownership was notable for its tendency to buy big and sell big, with around €400 million spent and just under €300 million received in transfer fees from the 2014-15 to 2018-19 season, recent years have heralded a different approach – spend little and keep selling big. The Valencia hierarchy have defended the strategy as a necessary process to balance the books after the club posted pre-pandemic losses of over €300 million.

But the obvious consequence of cuts to the playing budget has been a further destabilising of on-pitch performances, fuelling fan anger. The void left by the sale of international players on high wages had to be filled by Valencia’s latest pool of promising youngsters, such as Javi Guerra and Hugo Guillamón, who rallied to retain the club’s La Liga status in a relegation-troubled 2022-23 campaign.

The lack of transparency over club strategy has hastened the speed with which the fan protest movement, recognised internationally by its slogan ‘Lim Go Home’, has grown since 2020. “I think Valencia fans – like those of many other clubs in Spain with absentee owners – have been frustrated at being left in the dark by those in charge,” The Athletic’s López-Menchero said.

In preparation for writing this piece, and a short news story which was published by the South China Morning Post, I had set my sights on an interview with those at the top of Valencia CF. I hoped it would be a much-needed opportunity for the club to discuss their point of view and defend a controversial decade of control at Mestalla.

But Peter Lim is rarely quoted in the media – particularly if the topic of discussion is Valencia – and has been absent from the city for years. As Sid Lowe wrote in The Guardian, the words ‘Lim Go Home’, which are plastered all over the city and region, are ironic. Lim has spent the majority of his time as owner of Valencia at home, in Singapore.

Valencia’s Singaporean club president, Layhoon Chan, addresses the Spanish media at annual press conferences, but is otherwise unavailable. Other members of its board of directors are equally inaccessible.

After five unanswered interview requests, Valencia’s Communication and Press Office informed me that “as we have indicated in previous requests, it is not possible to respond to your request at this time. We will contact you if it could be carried out in the future.”

Needless to say, a follow-up email from the club is yet to be received at the time of writing. Pérez scoffed at my attempt to communicate with the club, and later research certainly suggested that press access to the Valencia hierarchy remains out of the question.

Communication, or the lack thereof, ranks highly in Libertad VCF’s concerns. Supporters were blocked from responding to all social media posts from Valencia’s official account until June 2022, when a press release stated that the club could not continue to “turn its back” on fans.

Pérez suggested that former employees of the club’s social media department, which he again described as being managed “like a dictatorship”, were fired for disagreeing with Lim’s management of Valencia.

Furthermore, no club project has been shrouded in greater mystery than the half-finished construction of Nou Mestalla – a new stadium intended to replace Los Ches’ charming yet crumbling home of 101 years. Nou Mestalla, an empty shell of a stadium, has loomed large over the characterless Benicalap area in the city outskirts since 2007.

“It could be a great advert for the city and something that takes the club to new levels, but it has sat unfinished for fifteen years and fans are totally nonplussed as to when it might be finalised,” López-Menchero said. “It sums up the stagnant nature of the club in recent years.”

Planning for an 80,000-capacity venue began in Valencia’s heyday of the modern era in the mid-2000s, under its previous ownership, with a view to further establish Los Ches in European footballing elite. By 2009, the global financial crisis completely halted work at the site, despite a considerable structure having been built.

The cost of the construction and its ensuing stagnation was a significant reason for the large debt accrued by Valencia, leading to the desperate sale of the club to Peter Lim in 2014. In the decade since, with Lim’s Valencia yet to achieve financial stability, the Singaporean has shown little interest in resuming an expensive process to complete Nou Mestalla.

Various updated plans and official redesigns of the ground have yielded little progress, only succeeding in earning considerable news coverage for what has become one of the most ill-famed sagas in Spanish football. From its first planned capacity of 80,000, the stadium’s proposed size was reduced to 61,500 in 2013, 54,000 in 2017 and, most recently, a new estimate of between 43,000 and 50,000 was provided by the club in 2021. For perspective, the current Mestalla stadium, which opened in 1923, has a capacity of 49,430.

Fifteen years since Nou Mestalla first broke ground, it is almost impossible to foresee it ever becoming a functional football stadium. After walking around its ghostly perimeter in June 2024, I compared my photography of Nou Mestalla to online images taken a decade ago. The pictures appeared identical.

Regardless, Nou Mestalla is ambitiously listed as a host venue for the 2030 FIFA World Cup which is set to be held in Spain, Portugal and Morocco. With new permission granted by the Valencian Generalitat (regional governing body) as of 12 July, 2024, the club must now resume development of the ground and complete Nou Mestalla by 2027, or face local fines and the loss of its host city status.

Although a club press release excitedly announced the council’s decision, with mention of neither the presumable high cost and difficulty of restarting construction nor Lim’s commitment to this latest vision, Valencianistas are divided on plans to resume building work in Benicalap. In a statement, Libertad VCF emphasized a call to “safeguard” the current ground, which will likely be sold to fund Nou Mestalla. But they welcomed the news on the precondition that serious consideration is given to the pros and cons of a resumption of the Nou Mestalla project.

Many supporters wish for the new stadium’s completion, hoping it will revitalise a hollow club in dire need of regeneration. Others are more reserved, citing a long-term disinterest in the project from Peter Lim and numerous failed, money-wasting attempts to make Nou Mestalla a reality.

On the day of the second boycott of Mestalla by Libertad VCF and other fan groups, the topic was not far from the centre of attention. Just off a busy Avenida de Suecia, a large banner tied between two trees read ‘STOP NOU MESTALLA’.

Attachment to the creaking current Mestalla is widespread, and understandable. A stone’s throw from the heart of the city, it is a wonderful, grand old stadium with frighteningly steep sides and, as was previous tradition for Spanish football grounds, a small roof on only side. A seat in the uppermost tiers is a dramatic bird’s-eye view of the pitch far below and, at eye-level, the historic Valencia city centre, as the sun beats down on uncovered spectators.

Mestalla, an enchanting throwback to a bygone era of stadium architecture, is at the centre of what fans lovingly call ‘Valencianismo’. “Valencia CF isn’t a normal company,” Pérez said. “It is a company that needs to be part of Valencian society, in terms of symbolism and history.”

The club’s role as an institution of the Valencian people is Libertad VCF’s raison d’être; a role they hope can be revived after ten years of damage to the relationship between fans and ownership. The association was founded in 2020 without a “single direct [previous] contact” between members, Pérez explained.

“Through social media, it was just people who felt the need to form something – to put something together which gave us a voice,” he said. Pérez, the group’s president and the go-to person for press calls, is supported by several fellow supporters who share his vision and, most importantly, the desire to rid Valencia of Peter Lim.

To my surprise, I was kindly welcomed into their usual matchday headquarters on 19 May – a small covered stall with boxes of free ‘Lim Go Home’ posters at the ready – by a friendly bunch of middle-aged and older members. It was not the furious, radical group (official Valencia club communications have labelled some anti-Lim protestors in similar terms) which I had expected to meet, and certainly not one which called for two or three police riot vans to soon arrive with the aim of covering the rebellious goings-on inside the tent.

Its personnel were mostly, without desire to cause offence, of a fair age. If there was to be anarchy on Avenida de Suecia on 19 May, it was hard to imagine it being led by such well-mannered, pleasant people.

But the association’s members were robust in at least one regard – making the voice and view of Libertad VCF heard. They distributed the now iconic yellow ‘Lim Go Home’ banners to passing fans, engaged in healthy discussion with fellow Valencianistas and, when the moment arrived to protest, demonstrated passionately within the rules of the law.

At first, Pérez refused to be drawn on the friendship of the group. But the bond is evident, if a secondary thought to the important message they wish to transmit.

“In the end, you obviously develop an affection for them that goes beyond friendship and goes beyond family,” he said. “You do know that whoever you have by your side is capable of giving everything for Valencia Club de Fútbol.”

Pérez concluded: “So of course, I don’t know exactly how I feel about them but what I can tell you is that I admire them for what they do.”

Their campaign, to restore Valencia to serving its fans’ best interests, has been built upon determined, composed protesting. Libertad VCF regularly meet with local politicians to discuss a way forward and aim to lead a respectful, dedicated campaign against the Valencia ownership.

As per its mission statement, the group advocates for professionalism, transparency, integrity and democratisation. It published several issues of fanzine La veu de l’afició (‘The Fans’ View’) and even a book, The Black Book of Meriton. It documents the ‘101 most important scandals’ of the Meriton Holdings Ltd era – Lim’s investment company which is listed as the official owner of Valencia.

“What we are trying to prove is that what you cannot do is embezzle a club’s funds because you want to use it for something else,” Pérez said, referring to the club’s player trading business.

Against the backdrop of what Pérez claimed to be a “dictatorship” led by Peter Lim, the association’s president hopes for a future Valencia Club de Fútbol which is fully committed to more democratic processes. One which includes its supporters in the management of the club and with safeguards to prevent further divisive ownership.

Despite having cited progress towards greater fan ownership in Germany and England as a hopeful future for Spanish football, Pérez showed no interest in Libertad VCF moving to share control of the club. Rather, they will continue doing things “game by game” and aim to convince politicians that football clubs should be protected by the state.

“The association will never stop being the version of Valencia which comes together to be heard,” Pérez said. Later, amongst the loud throng of protest on Avenida de Suecia, I saw him being interviewed by Spanish national media – the face of the movement once more.

Pérez’s work with Libertad VCF is admirable, particularly the group’s commitment to producing literature and voicing their opinions without personal abuse of the club’s hierarchy. When the boycott began pre-match on 19 May, Libertad VCF members positioned themselves on one side of the street, while Valencia’s ultras – a younger, more hot-headed group – were on the other.

As the association chanted and revealed banners with direct calls for politicians to intervene, the ultras roared, hurling abuse towards the Mestalla main stand. Throughout the ten years of Lim’s control at Valencia, passionate fan criticism of the Singaporean’s decision-making has often shifted into racism against Lim, his family and board of directors.

In July 2020, his daughter, Kim, wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post that “the club is ours and we can do anything we want with it… no one can say anything” after a barrage of online “scolding” and “cursing” from some Valencia fans. Such abuse is not uncommon within the protest movement, revealing a thin line between disapproval and discrimination of Peter Lim and others.

In spite of the clear difference in behaviour of Libertad VCF and ultra groups, almost every Valencianista opposed to the club’s current ownership has subscribed to the ‘Lim Go Home’ mantra. The words have come to epitomise the protest movement and were, most likely, first popularised by Libertad VCF in an issue of their fan magazine.

Today, yellow posters with the letters in black – a deliberate choice for the message to be most visible from afar – are handed out to supporters pre-match at every home game, and later held up by thousands inside the stadium. The slogan hangs from balconies in not just the city of Valencia, but also in many small towns of the Valencian Community region.

Pérez told me that the ‘Lim Go Home’ message was even displayed on a van which was driven around central London and taken to Singaporean embassies in Spain, as organised by Libertad VCF. Moreover, the now famous three words are usually the most popular comment in the social media replies to posts from Singaporean politicians.

I asked him about the phrase and its origins. He was quick to defend it, stating that it “doesn’t have any racist undertone”.

“The slogan wasn’t thought through and it’s not a fascist slogan either,” he added. “The slogan simply points out that ‘Peter Lim, we don’t want you here, we don’t want your business here’, in English.”

I felt that Pérez had not fully considered Libertad VCF’s choice of words by using the slogan, particularly in their fight to maintain a professional protest movement and the potential effect of popularising ‘Lim Go Home’. Despite his view of its meaning, the words ‘go home’ are all too similar to typical xenophobic, racist rhetoric faced by much of the Asian community in Spain.

‘Lim Go Home’, in all likelihood, would not be so widely accepted as a protest slogan in British football. And I was unable to find any significant condemnation of Valencia fans’ use of the phrase.

It is certainly possible that the words were mistranslated from Spanish. I believed Pérez when he said it has never been intended for use as a racist expression and, without doubt, many fans may not realise its connotations in English.

But taking that as a way of completely disregarding ‘Lim Go Home’ as racist does not hold up. It was always intended to be an English slogan, as Lim famously speaks little Spanish, and saying ‘idos a vuestra casa’ (‘go home’) or similar would be considered racism in Spain.

Simply, more care and attention should have been paid to its meaning. Without that, it is open for use by racists and unlikely to ever gain traction online with English-speaking fans or commentators who may sympathise with Valencia fans’ struggle.

Still, shining further light on the mess of the Lim regime understandably remains a key mission for Pérez and Libertad VCF. Although their boycott on 19 May against Girona did not make as many headlines as their 2022 walkout, it created more stark images of a Valencia match in full flow as thousands remained outside.

“What we are saying to politicians is simply this,” Pérez said. “Sit down with Peter Lim and tell him: let’s find a solution where you relinquish your shareholding at Valencia CF, but where you don’t lose out either… but they won’t even sit down with him.”

Valencia lost the game 3-1 and ended the La Liga season in ninth place, with a sombre atmosphere inside a near-silent Mestalla. While the small contingent of Girona fans generated some noise, most came from Avenida de Suecia, where protestors sang for the entire ninety minutes.

It is not clear if their cry has been heard by Peter Lim. The owner has not visited Valencia for some time and is unlikely to do so soon.

The only occasion on which Peter Lim did appear in Valencia this year was in the form of a satirical ninot (a figure made by an artist) at the city’s famous Fallas festival. Ninots can be based on characters from the artist’s imagination, popular culture or current events.

On the night of the cremà, the final event of Fallas, the intricately-designed ninots and much larger versions are burnt, or rather blown up spectacularly, in the streets of Valencia. While this caricature melted away in the flames, with a ‘Lim Go Home’ banner at the feet of the model, it is hard to picture such a quick ending to ten chaotic years in Valencia. But it is sure to be just as intense.