Mestalla and Covid-19, beginning and end

Mestalla will have an audience again next Sunday at 6:30 p.m. The feud that will receive 5000 spectators for the duel before him Eibar and it will be the first stadium of LaLiga Santander to host a soccer game with people in its stands. It has not been an easy path for any club, but even less so for Valencia, which has left several trails behind. Covid-19 cases in your workforce, some even caught it twice, matches labeled “biological bombs” and the fact of being the first LaLiga club to play a game behind closed doors before the temporary suspension of the competitions.

Because Covid-19 arrived or invaded the football routine almost from one week to the next, however in the days before the suspension some teams had to play without their people and the only LaLiga team that suffered this measure was Valencia Club de Fútbol. Does exactly 431 days the fans of the team che gathered in the villages of Mestalla to receive the footballers and encourage them to overcome the tie against Atalanta. The reception was to remember, but it remained at that, in a vague memory since the team did not have within Mestalla the strength of its fans and they had to do it alone with the Italians … And the rest is history.

That last game in which, although there was no public, there was in the surroundings of the stadium, it was the party of pessimism. Those present wanted believe in the comeback of his beloved Valencia and in that the duel against the Italians behind closed doors it would just be temporary, but regarding the first, Ilicic was in charge of killing all hope at 10 minutes and regarding the second, that same morning of that fateful March 10 Ximo Puig had announced that the failures would not be held in Valencia, which implied that things were going for a long time.

And the reality is that that general pessimism has not abandoned Valencianism in these more than 400 days. Valencia, Valencia, Valencians and Valencians arrived on that March 10th thinking about their beloved Fallas and that their team could reach the Champions quarterfinals thirteen years later, but from that day on everything fell apart And along the way, European classifications have vanished, footballers kept in the memory of the fans and there was almost no decline.

Therefore, it can only be branded as poetic justice the fact that Mestalla will be the first stadium to open. It is true that it will only be 5,000 of the 45,000 that fit in the stadium, also that the atmosphere in the Turia is as is with the directive and that the fans will probably voice their complaints. But 442 days after the fans went to that Valencia 2-1 Betis, Valencians will be able to breathe the smell of freshly watered grass, praise many of the players who have left their souls this year to avoid a debacle and, finally, put a footballing joy in your mouth. Mestalla was the beginning of Covid-19 in Spanish football and although it will not be the end, it will be a point and a separate from a pandemic epilogue that sooner or later will end. It was time.