Mestalla History
The Mestalla pitch was inaugurated on 20 May 1923, with a friendly match that brought Valencia CF
and Levante UD face to face. It was the beginning of a new era that meant
farewell to the old place, Algirós, which will always remain in the memories of
the Valencians as first home of the club. A long history has treaded on the
Mestalla field since its very beginning, when the Valencia team was not yet in
the Primera División. Back then, this stadium could hold 17,000 spectators, and
in that time the club started to show its potential in regional championships,
which led the managers of that time to carry out the first alterations of the
Mestalla in 1927. The stadium's total capacity increased to 25,000 before it
became severely damaged during the Civil War.
Mestalla was used as concentration camp and junk
warehouse. It would only keep its structure, since the rest was a lonely plot
of land with no terraces and a stand broken during the war. Once the Valencian
pitch was renovated, Mestalla saw how the team managed to bring home their
first title, the 1941 Cup. An overwhelming team was playing on the grass of the
redesigned Valencian stadium in that decade, a team that conquered three League
titles and two Cups with the legendary ‘electric forwards’ of Epi, Amadeo,
Mundo, Asensi and Guillermo Gorostiza. Those years of sporting success also
served as support to recover little by little the Mestalla ground.
During the decade of the fifties, the Valencia ground
experienced the deepest change in its whole history. That project resulted in a
stadium with a capacity of 45,500 spectators. It was a dream that was destroyed
by the flood that flooded Valencia in October 1957 after the overflowing of the
Turia River. Nevertheless, Mestalla not only returned to normality, but also
some more improvements were added, like artificial light, which was inaugurated
during the 1959 Fallas festivities. This was the beginning of a new change for
the Mestalla.
During the sixties, the stadium kept the same
appearance, whilst the urban view around it was quickly being transformed.
Moreover, the Valencian domain became from that moment on, the setting of big
European feats. Nottingham Forest was the first foreign team that played an
official match in Mestalla with the "Che" club. They played on the 15th of September
1961 and it was the first clash of a golden age full of continental successes,
reinforced with the Fairs Cup won in 1962 and 1963. Mestalla had just entered
the European competitions as a stadium where the most important events were
taking place.
From 1969, the expression "Anem
a Mestalla" (Let’s go to Mestalla), so
common among the supporters, started to fall into oblivion. The reason was the
change of name that meant a big tribute that the club paid to his most symbolic
president that lasted for a quarter of a century. Luis Casanova Giner admitted
that he was completely overwhelmed by such honour, and the president himself
requested in 1994 that his name was again replaced by the name of Mestalla, as
it happened. At the beginning of the seventies, the local bench of the
back-then-called Luis Casanova stadium was occupied by Alfredo Di Stéfano,
whose results were the winning of one League competition, one second place in
the League and two Cup finals lost by the minimum difference. Moreover,
Valencia participated for the first time in the European Cup and made their
debut in the UEFA Cup. It all was a series of events that made that every match
in the stadium located in Suecia Avenue turned into a big party.
In 1972, the head office of the club, located in the
back of the numbered terraces, was inaugurated. It consisted of an office of
avant-garde style with a worth mentioning trophy hall, which held the
foundation flag of the club. In the summer of 1973 there was another new thing,
the goal seats, which meant the elimination of fourteen rows of standing
terraces providing more comfort and an adjustment to the new times. Valencia's
management started to consider the possibility of moving Mestalla from its
present location to some land in the outskirts of the town, but finally the
project was turned down some years later.
At that time, Mario Kempes was the best footballer in
the world and was playing for Valencia. With the Matador in its team, Valencia
won the Copa del Rey, the Cup Winners Cup and European Super Cup in consecutive
years. The "Che"
team became continental superchampion in the last European final played in
Mestalla. It was in 1980 against Nottingham Forest, which oddly enough was the
first foreign team that had played an official match in the Valencian stadium.
Mestalla, which in 1925 had held the first match of
the Spain national football team in Valencia, was chosen as the perfect setting
for the debut of Spain in the 1982 World Cup, although the performance of the
combined national team was not finally what was expected. Ten years later, the
Olympic team would look for support in the Valencian stadium, this time with a
very different result, since the selected young footballers finally got the
gold medal in the 1992 Summer Olympics held in Barcelona.
Mestalla has been the setting for important
international matches, has held several Cup finals, has been seat for Levante
UD, home of the Spanish national team and exile for Castellón and Real Madrid
in the European Cup; it has seen important footballers like Mario Kempes,
Maradona or Pelé himself running on its grass and above all, it has lived the
most important feats of Valencia Club de Fútbol.
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