Well, what a let-down.
Valencia headed into their Champions League opener against Juventus on Wednesday night with high hopes of mounting a serious challenge to the Italian champions and Manchester United for a place in the knockout stages.
But they went down with barely whimper as Juve overcame the early – and seemingly very harsh – dismissal of Cristiano Ronaldo to register an extremely comfortable 2-0 victory.
And although both goals came from the penalty spot through Miralem Pjanic, the visitors were full value for their victory after creating several clear chances while the home team were restricted to hardly any.
Don’t be fooled by the match stats, which show that Valencia had 26 attempts on goal, because nearly all of those were speculative and harmless long-range pot-shots which totally failed to trouble visiting keeper Wojciech Szczesny. The truth is that stats sometimes lie, and Valencia were well beaten.
Of course, Juventus are a fine team and there is no shame for Valencia to lose against them. But far more than the result, the manner of the performance from Marcelino’s team was extremely concerning, with Valencia looking out of their depth and failing to satisfactorily compete despite playing with an extra man for more than an hour.
It was boys against men stuff, and Valencia more than contributed to their downfall with a series of inexplicable individual errors.
Although captain Dani Parejo missing a penalty in stoppage time is the most obvious candidate, perhaps the game’s biggest defining moment came with around 15 minutes remaining when the hosts sparked a rare outburst of optimism by winning a corner on the left. But Parejo played it short and was then two yards offside for a return pass from Denis Cheryshev, providing a neat encapsulation of how Los Che couldn’t even do the basic things right.
The main mitigating circumstance for Marcelino’s men was the absence of powerhouse midfielder Geoffrey Kondogbia, whose strong and lung-busting style epitomises the team when they are at their best. With his back-up Francis Coquelin also out, that left Valencia with a midfield duo of Parejo and Daniel Wass, a pair of technically good but physically flimsy players, especially against such canny and organised opponents as Juventus.
Dejected: Valencia have endured a rocky start to the season.
But Valencia didn’t only lose this game due to the identity of their midfielders, and the most worrying thing is that it continues their poor start to a season which promised so much but is already in danger of unravelling.
Five games into the campaign, they are still looking for their first win and have only scored three goals, having followed up an encouraging opening day draw with Atletico Madrid by losing against Espanyol and drawing with Levante and Real Betis.
There’s still time to turn things around, but the optimism generated by a seemingly productive summer in the transfer market is very evaporating. New forwards Michy Batshuayi and Kevin Gameiro are contributing little, Wass hasn’t found a settled role, skipper Parejo has badly regressed, frontman Rodrigo is quickly losing confidence and, most seriously, the team appears to be in danger of losing its collective identity.
That the team and individual players are under-performing is obvious, but the question is why? The display against Juventus was only the symptom, and Marcelino needs to find the cause – and then fix it.
Having turned the team around after taking over at the start of last season, he should be given time. But time is a finite commodity for Valencia if they want to maintain their chances of prolonging their Champions League campaign beyond Christmas and avoid leaving themselves in a big hole in the race for a top four finish in La Liga.
Their first chance to rectify matters comes on Sunday with an intriguing trip to fellow top four contenders Villarreal, the club where Marcelino enjoyed so much success by taking the Yellow Submarine back into the top flight. Another defeat this weekend could plunge Valencia to the brink of crisis.
