Valencia CF

Lore & Background

Valencia has won six La Liga titles and finished as runners-up six times, as well two Segunda División titles, eight Copa del Rey trophies, one Spanish Super Cup, and one Copa Eva Duarte. In European competitions, they have won two Inter-Cities Fairs Cups, one UEFA Cup, one UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, two UEFA Super Cups, and one UEFA Intertoto Cup. They have also reached two consecutive UEFA Champions League Finals in 2000 and 2001. The club was champion of the Small Club World Cup in 1966, and runner-up in 1955, despite not having FIFA world title recognition, and fourth in the Latin Cup of 1953. In 2004, the IFFHS named Valencia World's Best Club. Valencia were also members of the G-14 group of leading European football clubs and since its end has been part of the original members of the European Club Association.

Reader's Guide

The club was established on 5 March 1919 and officially approved on 18 March 1919, with Octavio Augusto Milego Díaz as its first president; incidentally, the presidency was decided by a coin toss. The club played its first competitive match away from home on 21 May 1919 against Valencia Gimnástico, and lost the match 1–0. Valencia moved into the Mestalla Stadium in 1923, having played its home matches at the Algirós ground since 7 December 1919. The first match at Mestalla pitted the home side against Castellón Castalia and ended in a 0–0 draw.

In another match the day after, Valencia won 1–0 against the same opposition. 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. In the 1941–42 season, the club won its first Spanish La Liga championship title, although winning the Copa del Rey was more reputable than the championship at that time.

The club maintained its consistency to capture the league title again in the 1943–44 season, as well as the 1946–47 league edition. They would conclude their decade of success by winning the 1949 Copa del Rey; this meant Valencia ended the decade with a record of three La Liga and two Copa del Rey titles. In the 1950s, Valencia failed to emulate the success of the previous decade, even though it grew as a club. A restructuring of Mestalla resulted in an increase in spectator capacity to 45,000, while the club had a number of Spanish and foreign stars.

Players such as Spanish international Antonio Puchades and Dutch forward Faas Wilkes graced the pitch at Mestalla. In the 1952–53 season, the club finished as runners-up in La Liga, and in the following season, won the Copa del Rey, then known as the Copa del Generalísimo. While managing average league form in the early 1960s, Valencia had its first European success in the form of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (the forerunner to the UEFA Cup), defeating Barcelona in the final of the 1961–62 edition.

The following edition of the tournament pitted Valencia against Croatian club Dinamo Zagreb in the final, which the Spanish side also won.