Joaquín’s footprint in Mestalla

It was the summer of 2006 and Valencia CF had just finished their first season Quique Sanchez Flores in which the competitive team that had won Leagues just two years earlier had recovered to become a behemoth not only in Spain but also in Europe with two Champions League finals.

That was the Valencia CF of the wealthy and disastrous businessman Juan Soler. The Valencian had taken charge of the operations and the operation Joaquín was one of the examples of what his management was. That summer Quique had asked for a right winger to strengthen the bond and raise the level he already had with Miguel Angulo.

The signing Quique wanted was mancini, Brazilian from Roma, but his price, lower than what was finally paid for Joaquín, was unattainable. That’s why it’s negotiated Tasty simaowhich was located in Hotel Las Arenas in Valencia but could not be closed because already then, with Mendes in the operation, no agreement was reached with the Portuguese.

After that negotiation for Simao failed at the end of July, Quique insisted yes or yes because he wanted a right winger. And the option of Joaquín Sánchez appeared. I remember it like it was that signing now. I got excited. A lot of. It was my time of long summers in my beloved Picazo, my mother’s town in Cuenca. Back then there was no internet on mobile phones, or WhatsApp or anything like that. The information was limited to the daily press, Marca or AS, to the night radio, in my city RNE arrived and with great difficulty SER and teletext. Yes, to teletext. From 200 to 210 they were the sports news and rarely anything fell from Valencia CF.

Well, when Joaquín came on, it sounded like a Chinese story to me, because Real Madrid and Chelsea wanted that Joaquín. They had both bid unsuccessfully for it. But yes, Valencia did it, convinced him and pressed the key for the Andalusian to declare himself in absentia and ask Lopera to sell him. He even held a press conference, which certainly cost him criticism from his béticos at the time. That signing closed at the end of August, with Soler’s approval that Lopera claimed to end his signing and with the trip to Albacete as a measure of pressure as the signing was nearing completion.

Joaquin played five years in Mestalla and it was hard to start. Mainly his first year where a lot was expected of him and it took him a while to get a version similar to the one he gave at Betis. Some say it failed, but I’ve always been happy when he came through Valencia. Happy because Joaquín’s football wasn’t just goals or assists, he gave them and scored them. His football was one of those that invited you to go to a football game in a stadium. A football of which there is less and less, dribbling, improvising, facing again and again, blowing, magic… It was a pleasure to watch him lead the Mestalla band and I will always fondly remember his years here.

I will remember it as the night I ran into him at the door of a nightclub just as we had an interview the next day. He told me ‘illo a garbeito en pa casa’… it was my first years in the business and that greeting at the door of the disco was like a ‘Joaquín knows me’… Genius and figure. Today he says goodbye to football 17 years after his transfer to Valencia CF. One of Spain’s best band players leaves. And he leaves with a football very different from the one we live in today. With football, with journalism and with a completely different life.