History of Valencia CF

Valencia CF won the Regional Championship in 1923, and was eligible to play in the domestic Copa del Rey cup competition for the first time in its history.

The Spanish Civil War halted the progress of the Valencia team until 1941, when it won the Copa del Rey, beating RCD Espanyol in the final.

Former two-time European Footballer of the Year award winner Alfredo Di Stéfano was hired as coach in 1970, and immediately inspired his new club to their fourth La Liga championship and first since 1947.

Koldo Aguirre replaced Miljanić as coach, and Valencia barely avoided relegation that year, relying on favorable results from other teams to ensure their own survival.

The club finally hit rock bottom when it was relegated at the end of the 1985–86 season, and riven with internal problems such as unpaid player and staff wages, as well as poor morale.

Guus Hiddink was appointed as head coach in the 1991–92 season, and the club finished fourth in the League and reached the quarter-finals of the Copa del Rey.

Brazilian coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, fresh from winning the 1994 FIFA World Cup with the Brazil national team, became manager at Mestalla in 1994.

Parreira immediately signed Spanish goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta, Russian forward Oleg Salenko, and Predrag Mijatović, but failed to produce results expected of him.

The club's earlier successes continued to elude it, although it was not short of top coaching staff like Luis Aragonés and Jorge Valdano, as well as foreign star forwards like Brazilian Romário, Claudio López, Ariel Ortega from Argentina, and Adrian Ilie from Romania.

The notable signings of that summer were John Carew, Rubén Baraja, Roberto Ayala, Vicente Rodríguez, and the Brazilian left back Fábio Aurélio.

After extra time, it went to penalties, where a Mauricio Pellegrino miss gave Bayern Champions League glory and dealt Valencia a second-straight exit in the finals.

The final game of the season meant Valencia only needed a draw at the Camp Nou against Barcelona to seal Champions League qualification.

The president, D. Pedro Cortés, resigned for personal reasons and left the club in July, with the satisfaction of having won one Copa del Rey, one Spanish Super Cup, and having been runners-up in two successive Champions League finals.

D. Jaime Ortí replaced him as president and expressed his intention on maintaining the good form that had made the club so admired on the European circuit.

Among the playing squad, Gaizka Mendieta, Didier Deschamps, Luis Milla, and Zlatko Zahovič left, while Carlos Marchena, Mista, Curro Torres, Francisco Rufete, Gonzalo de los Santos, and Salva Ballesta all arrived.

After a defeat in A Coruña against Deportivo on 9 December 2001, the team had to win against RCD Espanyol in the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys to prevent falling further behind the league leaders.

The 2002–03 season was a disappointing one for Valencia, as they failed in their attempt to retain the La Liga title and ended up outside of the Champions League spots in fifth, behind Celta de Vigo.

His second reign at the club was a disappointment, however, as Valencia harboured realistic hopes of retaining their La Liga crown but, by February, found themselves in seventh place.

Voro would eventually drag Valencia from the relegation battle to a safe mid-table finish of 10th place, finally ending a disastrous league campaign for Los Che.

The start of the young manager's career looked to be promising, with the club winning four out of its first five games, a surge that saw the team rise to the top position of the La Liga table.

Despite looking impressive in Europe, Los Che then hit a poor run of form in the league that saw them dip as low as seventh in the standings.

Amid the slump emerged reports of a massive internal debt at the club exceeding 400 million Euros, as well as that the players had been unpaid in weeks.

After a run where Valencia took only five points from ten games in La Liga, an announcement was made that the club had secured a loan that would cover the players' expenses until the end of the year.

This announcement coincided with an upturn in form, and the club won six of its next eight games to surge back into the critical fourth place Champions' League spot.

However, Los Che were then defeated by 4th place rivals Atlético Madrid and Villarreal in two of the last three games of the campaign, and finished sixth in the table, which meant they failed to qualify for a second successive year for the Champions League.

But, despite the loss of two of the club's most important players, the team was able to finish comfortably in third again 2010–11 La Liga for the second season running, although they were eliminated from the Champions League by German side Schalke 04 in the Round of 16.

Almost a month after Salvo was named president, on 1 August 2013, Valencia sold star striker Roberto Soldado to English club Tottenham Hotspur for a reported fee of €30 million.

[4] Under Pizzi, Valencia reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Europa League, where they lost to eventual winners Sevilla on away goals and finished 8th in La Liga despite a disastrous start to the season.

[33] Days later, on 7 January 2017, Valencia sporting director Jesús García Pitarch also resigned, saying he felt like he was being used as a shield for criticism by the club and that he could not defend something he no longer believed in.

[48] Following those years of mismanagement, the playing squad was cut significantly in terms of quality and Lim's ownership has faced strong criticism in Valencia.