In November 2006, Valencia presented their plans for a new state-of-the-art stadium.
“We’re going to build the best stadium in the world,” stated Juan Soler,
the club’s president at the time. 14 years later, though,
they still haven’t built it and Valencia remain at the Mestalla, their home since 1923.
So, will the New Mestalla ever be completed?
The project had been in the works even before 2006. At that time,
Valencia were a club on the up. They’d reached back-to-back Champions League finals in 1999/2000
and 2000/01 under Héctor Cúper, and then won LaLiga in 2001/02 and 2003/04 under Rafa Benítez.
They were Spanish football’s third giant and, logically, wanted a 75,000-capacity
super stadium befitting their status. The presentation of the project was held at the
city’s Science Museum and was a real celebration of the club’s progress and seemingly bright
future. Directors from other Spanish clubs such as Barcelona and Atlético Madrid were in attendance
to show support to Valencia, as were directors from European sides such as Inter Milan, Juventus
and PSG. It was a big deal. Valencia even boasted of how they’d been the first ever club to consult
UEFA on their new stadium plans and of how they’d been praised as “a model club” for doing so.
The ground was to be built on the site of a former factory, four kilometres from
the original Mestalla. The initial date set for completion was March 2009, with the ground ready
for use in the 2009/10 campaign - and it would be the work of renowned architect Mark Fenwick,
who’d go on to work on several of the venues for the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
But the stadium wasn’t completed. Instead,
work was halted in February 2009 and the half-built stadium has sat there ever since.
After the work commenced in August 2007, the first stoppage actually occurred in May 2008
when four workers died after part of a structure upon which they were working collapsed. There was
a brief pause in the build as an investigation was carried out, before work continued.
For a while, at least.
In February of 2009, work again came to a halt and this time because of money.
Valencia’s debt had skyrocketed from repeated failure to qualify for the Champions League
and from the effects of the 2008 financial crisis – and the latter was especially significant,
given that part of the funding was to come from the sale of the old stadium,
located on prime real estate in the city centre. But, with the recession hitting Spain especially
hard, nobody was embarking on construction projects at the time.
So, the half-completed stadium sat there, and it wasn’t until December of 2011 that there was
a chance of work resuming. Then-president Manuel Llorente agreed a deal with Bankia,
launching the Project Newcoval that would see €240m of debt cleared
and credit of €170m given to Valencia to aid the stadium’s completion.
In exchange, Bankia would take ownership of the Old Mestalla site and of other property owned by
Valencia. With Bankia claiming that targets had not been reached, however, the company
unilaterally broke the deal in September of 2012 and – once again - the stadium was put on hold.
Next, in June 2013, new president Amadeo Salvo announced the Project GloVal,
which would see the stadium completed at cheaper cost. After consultation with the architects,
Valencia decided they could reduce the capacity from 75,000 to 61,500. They also planned to
reduce the size of the roof to leave just 75% of the stands covered instead of 100%.
Underground car park plans were shelved too and there was an agreement to use cheaper materials.
The overall effect, the club estimated, was that they would need just a further €100m to finish
To nobody’s surprise, though, there were further delays.
The majority of the club’s shares were soon purchased by Singaporean businessman Peter Lim’s
Meriton Holdings company in 2014 and this began a new chapte. More cost-saving modifications to
the design were prepared and a new agreement was reached with the Valencia City Council
over how to proceed. As part of this plan, the new stadium would have to be completed by 2021,
along with a commercial space and a public sports centre in the Benicalap neighbourhood.
Yet this latest deadline is not going to be met, either.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, it was going to prove difficult and now the huge loss
in club revenues has forced the club and the City Council to agree an extension.
The pandemic has hit Valencia hard, as has the fact that they failed to qualify for any UEFA
competition for the 2020/21 season. The ownership group embarked on a brutal cost-cutting exercise
in the 2020 summer transfer market, too, with key players Rodrigo Moreno, Ferran Torres,
Geoffrey Kondogbia, Francis Coquelin, Dani Parejo and Ezequiel Garay all allowed to leave.
The club’s current stance is that they’re working with the City Council to find solutions,
which is a familiar story for Valencia fans. As Valencia’s mayor Joan Ribó said:
“I don’t want this bad situation to drag on forever. I don’t want that for the club and
above all for the city and for the Benicalap district that has been left with an unfinished
structure that gives off an unwanted image at one of the main entry points to the city.”
14 years have now passed since Juan Soler promised “the best stadium in the world”. Instead,
Valencia got a New Mestalla that’s already gotten old.