Voro’s trick hasn’t worked this time. The sixth experience of the coach from L’Alcúdia in the uncomfortable chair at Mestalla has been traumatic. After holding a meeting in Singapore with Miguel Ángel Corona and the corporate director Javier Solís, Peter Lim has activated the second change of coach this season, removing Voro, after 15 days in charge, and sitting Rubén Baraja on the bench, one of the heroes of Valencia’s double in the 2003-04 academic year, during the golden stage of Rafa Benítez. After Gattuso and Voro, Singapore hands over a team in decline, with 17 games to go, to the 47-year-old coach from Valladolid, who signs until the end of the season. Pipo Baraja, not counting Voro’s six transition periods as caretaker, is the 10th manager since Lim bought the club in November 2014.
Trained as a coach at the Paterna Academy, where he prepared the Juvenil de División de Honor, hiring Baraja is risky, since he has not trained since November 2021, when he left Zaragoza, and his experience is reduced to the second division after passing by Elche CF, Rayo Vallecano, Sporting de Gijón, CD Tenerife and Real Zaragoza. His figure, idolized by the fans, implies a sentimental component that Singapore understands will be useful to anesthetize the stands, of nails with the owner. A legend of the double to alleviate the sports crisis and criticism of Lim.
The president of Valencia CF, Layhoon Chan, and the director of football, Miguel Ángel Corona, had decided to play the rest of the season with the Voro card after the resignation of Gennaro Gattuso. The Valencian coach, a regular wild card for Meriton Holdings when the team goes into a tailspin, left his office in Paterna on January 30 and put on his tracksuit for the eighth time since he replaced Ronald Koeman in 2008 to save the team from relegation. With Peter Lim as owner, Voro had spent five seasons as the usual locker room fire extinguisher, fulfilling his goal of refloating the team.
Unwilling and aware of his limitations, due to his inactivity as a coach and his current role as Team Manager in a law firm, Voro accepted the position “for an exercise of responsibility” and for fear of being retaliated by Singapore with dismissal if he refused. In all of his appearances, both his body language and verbalized, he exuded rejection. “My name is Salvador, but that doesn’t work like that,” he said by way of epitaph, on Saturday after losing to Athletic at Mestalla. His press conference in Girona, the second game in which he sat on the bench, was alarming. “I can’t do more,” said the Valencian coach. That phrase and others similar to it pushed Layhoon Chan and Corona to assess a new change on the bench, aware that they had made a mistake handing over the team to a coach who neither wanted it nor was prepared to manage it for 20 league games.
Voro’s three straight defeats, against Real Madrid, Girona FC and Athletic Club, led Corona to organize a selection of applicants against the clock. The technical director met with Vicente Moreno’s entourage, currently at Al Shabab, in the Saudi league, and had lunch last Thursday with Rubén Baraja and the son of agent Manuel García Quilón, Roberto, in a restaurant in Valencia. At the same time, different intermediaries who work with Singapore probed, among others, Abel Ferreira, the Portuguese coach of Palmeiras, according to what the Brazilian press published, and former River Plate player Marcelo Gallardo.
After the survey of available coaches, president Layhoon requested an audience with the central government of Valencia in Singapore and on Sunday afternoon, via Munich, Corona and Solís traveled to the Asian republic. The solution was announced this Monday at one in the afternoon, eight in Singapore. The personal and economic circumstances of each candidate closed the circle in Vicente Moreno and Rubén Baraja, chosen by Corona. Lim made the decision to stay out of it and validated the option with the greatest sentimental charge and the lowest economic cost. Baraja was without a team, his cachet is less, he did not claim a two and a half season contract like Moreno and, furthermore, there was no need to pay for his transfer as was the case with Massanasa, with a current contract at Al Shabab. The man from Valladolid arrives on the bench accompanied, as assistant coach, by another hero of the double like Carlos Marchena. Both are expected to start training immediately to prepare for the duel against Getafe next Monday.
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