A promising first season in Valencia saw Roberto Lazaró secure European qualification despite form dramatically tailing off in the last few matches. Lazaró’s success convinced owner Peter Lim – who a few months later handed the reigns over to new chairperson Or Shachar – to agree to youth recruitment and facilities improvements over the summer.
However, the summer proved tricky as Lazaró’s mission to go fully homegrown continued. He was forced to sell Thierry Randell Correia to Saudi for £27.5m, while fellow right back Dimitri Foulquier, who didn’t play a single game last season, joined Brest for £3.2m and winger Samu Castillejo went to Las Palmas for £2.7m. That left him without a natural right back and a striker, as Roman Yaremchuk returned to Belgium after his loan. In January, another massive sale saw holding midfielder Pepelu, signed for £4m from Levante last season, go to Saudi for £30.5m. Sergi Canós and centre back Eray Comert moved to Celta and Burnley for £3.7m and £4.8m. That funded several new contracts, including star players Javi Guerra increasing his weekly wage 9-fold to £180k and José Gayá going up to £120k.
Mahtal began tapping into the Ibero-American market, including bringing in 17-year-old striker Gabriel Silva for up to £7m and midfielder Joao Simoes for £1m from Sporting, midfielder Mattheus Ferreira for £4.4m from Vasco and full backs Esquerdinha and Fernandinho for £7m from Fluminense and £150k from Gremio. He also promoted winger Marc Jurado, who impressed with 60 goal contributions for the U19s last season.
Mahtal addressed the lack of a right back by shifting Cristhian Mosquera across as an inverted full back. That effectively makes the formation a 3-5-2, with Gayá given the freedom to bomb on down the left flank and Jesús Vázquez shoehorned into a defensive winger role to meet his playing demands despite his consistently terrible performances.
Second Season With Valencia
Valencia were made 8th favourites to win LaLiga at 100/1. Real Madrid remain 5/6 favourites ahead of Barcelona (3/1), holders Atlético (17/2) and Real Sociedad and Villarreal (25/1). Valencia shouldn’t even be competing with the teams at the top, given they had the third-lowest wage spend of £275k per week compared to Real’s ludicrous £4.9m, Barca’s £3.2m and Atlético’s £2.7m.
Valencia got handed a tough start to Lazaró’s second season, losing 3-0 at Real Madrid and 3-1 at Barcelona either side of Silva’s first senior goal in a 2-0 win at home to Sevilla. The young striker laid on the only goal for midfielder André Almeida to defeat early leaders Bilbao and Jurado’s first senior goal secured a 1-1 at Getafe. Valencia were far from entertaining, scoring 24 and conceding 15 – 6 of which were against Real and Barca – after 18 games heading into 2025 in 3rd. However, the top of LaLiga was very tight, with 1st to 7th split by just 7 points.
Silva repeated his feat of scoring against leaders Barca by bagging the opener in a 2-1 win in the first match of 2025. Three days later, Real came to town, and Almeida’s late goal nicked a 2-2. They kicked on from there and a 1-0 win at Bilbao saw Valencia part of a four-way tie for top spot in early February. The good form continued, including an uncharacteristic 5-0 hammering of Getafe and Silva’s brace inspiring a 3-2 victory at Sociedad, before losing an even more uncharacteristic 4-3 thriller at Atlético. A threadbare squad kept plugging away with a relatively friendly run-in, but couldn’t keep pace with a relentless Barca and again just slipped behind Real and Atlético in the last few games.
Valencia eventually finished 4th with 79 points, just 3 behind Atlético but 13 behind Barca and 9 clear of Sevilla, after 23 wins, 10 draws and just 4 defeats, scoring 66 and conceding 36. Gayá led the way with 11 LaLiga assists, 1 more than Lucas Ocampos and Ferland Mendy, and Silva was the joint-12th top scorer with 14 league goals alongside Ansu Fati.
Leading Valencia Back Into Europe
Mahtal got his first taste of European competition as Valencia entered the Europa League league phase. They got a relatively favourable set of fixtures but were even less entertaining than in the league, scoring just 10 and conceding 5 in 8 games to sneak through in 8th thanks to wins over Twente, Slavia Praha, Astana, Antwerp and Braga.
Valencia snuck past Young Boys 3-2 on aggregate before Gayá’s brilliance inspired a 4-0 aggregate success over Sociedad. That teed up a semi final against Nice, in which López and Silva nicked a 2-1 in France before Guerra, Silva and López earned a dominant 3-1 win at Mestalla, to send Valencia into the Europa League Final! The Final kept Valencia in Spain as they faced a huge test against Man UFC at Bilbao’s San Mamés, and Lazaró lined up:
Mamardashvili; Mosquera; Guillamón, Gasiorowski, Gayá; Ferreira; López, Almeida, Guerra, Pérez; Silva
Valencia had the first chance as López headed wide before Man UFC took the lead from a corner. Lazaró fired them up at the break and got a response as Mosquera slide Silva in to finish superbly from a tight angle. Nothing else happened and it went to extra time; predictably the ref sent off centre back Hugo Guillamón for an innocuous challenge and UFC immediately scored an undeserved winner.
Valencia Homegrown Players Update
Lazaró was really pleased with his second season in Valencia. They’d wrapped up Champions League football and come so close to securing a European trophy. And they’d achieved that with a pretty small squad with an average age of 21 and 10 players homegrown at the club, with several more set to join that group in the next year or so.
The star of the season was 18-year-old Silva, who scored 23 in 46 despite a slow start and becomes homegrown in 402 days. López chipped in with 13 goals and 6 assists, fellow winger Fran Pérez got 9 goals and 14 assists, and Gayá impressed again with a club-high 15 assists.
The 10 homegrown at the club players played a combined 257 league games with 24 goals and played 113 cup games with 8 goals. Here’s how they fared:
Valencia Mestalla had a poor season, getting relegated from Primera Federación with 33 points from 36 games. However, the U19s impressed again, again winning the Divisió de Honor Juvenil before losing to Barcelona in the quarter finals. But they did lift some silverware as they won Copa del Rey Juvenil with a 2-0 win against Zaragoza. The stars of the U19s were striker Marco with 46 goals, winger Rubén Torrella with 23 goals and 15 assists and midfielder Lawrence Amoah, who suffered a broken ankle in training at the end of the season, with 17 assists. Top performers from the youth sides included:
There was good news off the pitch, as infrastructure improvements took Valencia to perfect 20 training facilities, youth recruitment and junior coaching and 16 youth facilities, which saw the club’s youth setup ranked in the world’s top 10 for the first time. However, they got a slightly underwhelming youth intake led by two 4.5-star potential players in midfielder Manuel Calvo and 6ft 4in centre back Wassim Tomás.
So there were plenty of positive signs at Valencia as the club prepared for the final season at its historic home, La Mestalla, in the 2025/26 campaign. But how would they fare as they stepped up to the Champions League and would any new homegrown players step up? Join us next Wednesday to find out!
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