Valencia's absentee owner

Valencia’s owner Peter Lim was not at their Mestalla ground as his team played a Copa del Rey quarter-final against Barcelona on February 7. They lost that match, 5-0.  Nor was he present for the 7-1 away defeat to the same opponents in La Liga a couple of weeks earlier. 

His absence was no surprise. The Singaporean billionaire has not watched Valencia play in person since December 2019, when he attended a 1-1 home draw against Real Madrid.

In the intervening 1,500 days or so, there has been an ever-deepening divide between La Liga’s most infamous foreign owner and many of those around a club currently involved in a desperate fight against a potentially calamitous relegation to Spain’s second tier.

Once he had made his fortune, Lim looked for opportunities to get into European top-level football.  Before buying Valencia, he was linked with takeovers at Atletico Madrid and Deportivo La Coruna in Spain, England’s Middlesbrough, Rangers in Scotland and Italy’s Milan. In 2010, he bid £320million for Liverpool  but lost out to their present owners at Fenway Sports Group. 

In September 2014 when Lim bought 50 per cent of Salford City for an undisclosed sum a few months after the former players took control of a Greater Manchester club then in English football’s eighth tier.  Lim’s connection with Salford City also formally ended in August last year, when Neville bought out his stake for an undisclosed sum. 

When Lim first arrived at Valencia in 2014, paying €94million for a controlling 70 per cent stake, he was widely welcomed as a saviour given the club’s deep financial problems and previous institutional instability.

The optimism and positivity did not last long.  Lim’s decade as owner has seen the team’s general level continue to drop, as 12 head coaches and seven sporting directors came and went. Even the glow of that 2019 Copa del Rey success did not last long  — coach Marcelino Garcia Toral and sporting director Mateu Alemany both left within months after clashing with him.

“The way Peter sees it, he has put the money in, he owns the shares, he has the right to do what he sees necessary,” a Singaporean source who has worked with Lim told The Athletic. 

Over time, there has been less money to play with at Valencia.  Annual cuts to the wage bill have created a squad whose only objective is avoiding relegation from La Liga, disappointing fans who want to challenge for trophies again and return to playing in the European competitions having seen their team win two Spanish titles and the UEFA Cup (today’s Europa League) and reach back-to-back Champions League finals in the early years of this century. ‘Lim go home’ banners and chants are now seen and heard inside and outside Mestalla at all home games, while former players and local media outlets constantly call for him to sell up and leave.

There was a huge outcry last October when two Valencia supporters, Dani Cuesta and Mireia Saez, were arrested under Singapore’s strict vandalism laws, after placing a sticker saying ‘Lim must go’ outside his luxury apartment building. The two were released without charge after receiving what police called a “stern warning”, but the mutual misunderstanding between Singapore and Valencia had been further underlined.

Among his few supporters in Spain has been La Liga president Javier Tebas, who last September pointed out that Lim had invested lots of his own money — an estimated €300million, including loans — while Valencia’s previous, locally-based, owners left behind huge debts.

The club’s AGM in December at Mestalla was disrupted by several small shareholders protesting Lim’s ownership. Afterwards, then club president Lay Hoon Chan — a trusted figure who worked for Lim in his Singapore businesses — said: “If an attractive offer arrives, Lim will study it. If not, he’s in no hurry.” 

In Singapore, Lim Senior continues to enjoy regular visits from high-profile football friends who do appreciate him and with whom he feels more comfortable. Even those who have worked closely with Lim admit it is difficult to predict his moves — but they all say this born trader hates to lose money on a deal and is unlikely to sell Valencia at a loss.

“I do have some compassion for (Valencia’s fans),” Lim told the Financial Times in 2021, “but among ourselves, among friends, we say the smallest things give you the biggest headaches.”