DECEMBER 1 ― Peter Lim is a very successful man.
I am sure many of you are already well aware that Lim is one of Singapore’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, having amassed an estimated US$2 billion (RM8.51 billion) fortune through the stock market and other business investments.
Lim is also an avid football fan, having first attempted to break into the European game by launching an audacious but ultimately unsuccessful bid to buy Liverpool Football Club in 2010.
Just over a year ago, Lim turned his attentions to Spain by swooping in to rescue a sleeping giant which was in desperate need of investment after years of poor management: Valencia.
The title of “Spain’s third biggest team” has always been hotly contested between Atletico Madrid, Athletic Bilbao and Valencia, and Lim’s new investment certainly boast a glittering recent past, having won La Liga in 2002 and 2004, shortly after reaching two consecutive Champions League finals.
But when Lim arrived they were a broken club, saddled with huge debts by poor transfer dealings and a disastrous plan to build a new stadium, which now stands half-constructed and derelict after work was abandoned when the money ran out more than five years ago.
At first, everything went swimmingly for Lim upon his arrival in Spain. He received a rapturous hero’s welcome from Valencia fans who were eager to hail him as their club’s saviour, and then watched happily as the team finished in fourth place last season, securing a return to the Champions League.
In the summer, though, things started to go very wrong, as an internal power struggle between the manager, Nuno Espirito Santo, and key behind the scenes staff led to the departure of the latter.
From that moment onwards, Nuno was on borrowed time with the club’s fans, who are notorious for their fickle nature and lack of patience.
Despite leading the team back into European football at the end of his first season in charge, Nuno’s popularity with Valencia fans plummeted and never recovered. And after months of protests, he was finally forced out of the club this weekend, resigning (or being sacked, according to some reports) ahead of Sunday’s defeat at Sevilla.
Now, Peter Lim is in the position of needing to find a replacement manager, a task which faces every football club owner at some stage but in Valencia is particularly complicated by Lim’s relationship with a certain Jorge Mendes.
Super-agent supreme Mendes is one of the most powerful people in football, having made untold millions with his role in mega-money transfers for superstars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Jose Mourinho, Angel di Maria and Diego Costa.
Mendes is also the man who was largely responsible for bringing Peter Lim to Valencia, and therein lies the problem.
Ever since his arrival, Lim has allowed Mendes to exert a huge amount of influence over first team matters ― starting with Nuno, who was one of many Mendes clients at the club.
Most players signed by the club last summer are managed by Mendes, and the major departee ― Nicolas Otamendi, who was sold to Manchester City much to the fans’ disappointment ― also belongs to the Mendes stable.
In short, Lim has placed his club in danger of becoming little more than a Jorge Mendes All-Star XI: less a proper football club, more a feeder system for an extraordinarily agent to make as much money as possible.
Maybe Mendes has more honest intentions than that; maybe he genuinely plans to help Lim create sustained success. But his track record suggests otherwise, and the sale of Otamendi is strong evidence that his plan is to keep top-quality players at Valencia only long enough to develop their reputations and then earn his 10 per cent by selling them for another big-money move.
Being used as an agent’s money-making pawn is clearly not something any football fan would welcome, and the feeling that Nuno was a Mendes puppet had a lot to do with the now ex-coach’s unpopularity with fans.
And now, following Nuno’s departure, Lim is at a crossroads.
Quite simply, he has to decide whether to allow Mendes to make the next managerial appointment, or whether this is the time to take a step away from the agent and loosen Mendes’s grip.
For the sake of Valencia, and himself, he must take the second option.
If Mendes is allowed to install another of his clients as new manager, he will have no credibility with supporters and the current turmoil will only continue ― the removal of Nuno will have only succeeding in shifting the negativity onto his successor.
So Lim must make a decision based purely on who he thinks is the best available manager, not upon whom he is represented by. And then, just as importantly, he must allow the manager to manage in his own way.
There have been strong rumours this season that Nuno was directly favouring players who had a connection to Mendes in his team selections and tactics ― the ostracisation of major signing Alvaro Negredo, for example, was widely understood by fans as being a ‘punishment’ for not belonging to Mendes.
That kind of nonsense must stop, and Lim is the only person in a position to make it stop. If he doesn’t, the heat of the Valencia fans will very soon be turned straight in his direction.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
