They were four points off relegation in January but Marcelino García Toral clung to his job to enact an incredible turnaround
There were 60 seconds left in the hardest, most inexplicable season of Marcelino García Toral’s career and things had finally fallen into place, at last making a little sense, when he looked to the sky and seemed to say something. “I was thinking about my dad, who’s not here,” he revealed: a brief moment alone before he was engulfed, ended by the final whistle on the final day. Rubén Uría grabbed him from one side, Ismael Fernández from the other, and together Valencia’s manager and his assistants – his confidents – tried but mostly failed to take it all in. Around them, Valladolid’s supporters celebrated another season in primera; across the pitch, 900 Valencia fans celebrated another season in the Champions League.
If that shouldn’t have been so remarkable – Valencia qualified for the Champions League last season and at €165m they have the fourth-biggest budget in the first division – there was a reason why they leapt about like they did, a reason for all the emotion, the tears fighting through and the lumps in their throats. There had been resistance; now there was relief, redemption and a lesson for those prepared to listen. Valencia had got there and Marcelino had got there with them. For most of a year in which, in the words of José Luis Gayá, they had suffered like dogs, a season in which Marcelino said they had been “punched in the face daily”, neither of those things looked likely. But here they were, still standing.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2JXAbzr
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