Fernando Roig Talks Valencia, Villarreal Signings, and More

Today, Las Provincias has published an interview with Fernando Roig where he answers some interesting questions about the signing of both Parejo and Coquelin, his Valencia past and even gets more questions about Valencia and Valencia Basket.

Of course, the first question is obvious. Signing Coquelin and Parejo for less than 10 millions is a great move. He says it’s “a good move.” and that “Valencia decided to continue with them, and we saw the opportunity”. He also remarks that is Valencia the first one to put them in the market and Villarreal decided to capitalize on it. This also gets the question about if the price has been marked by the pandemic, and he confirms that Villarreal “wants to spend the same amount that it receives” while also confirming that “income will be down due to season tickets”. One of the more interesting quotes of the interview in my opinion is this one: “The best is always that you are approached for players and you are not in a need to sell.”

One interesting topic is football and fans, where Fernando Roig shares his opinion that fans not being allowed in would be bad for clubs and people as they would lose the habit of watching the games at the stadium. He gives another interesting quote: “Without the fanbase it cannot be football because the life of football is through the fanbase”.

This is a mentality that Villarreal has been showing for a long time in the area, that has allowed them to become a top team in the Comunitat. He remarks, when asked, that he doesn’t work to be on top of Valencia, just to put the team around the best there are in Spain and being known around Europe. He also shares that he would love more teams of the Comunitat playing in Primera. One quote he leaves is: “Being the best one of the Comunitat is not worth it if everyone is down, the prize is being 4th or 5th in La Liga”

From this point, the conversations turns to talk about Valencia. Fernando Roig would prefer that Valencian businessmen were the ones calling the shots at the club. This also goes on to put the money quote: “I’m the administrator of Villarreal, not the owner, the fanbase are the owners, whether they have season tickets or not, that consider themselves groguets, football is passion.”

Getting a question involving Peter Lim was obvious considering his Valencian past (shareholder and brother of a former president), particularly after that last quote. He prefers to be classy and doesn’t give an exact answer if Lim feels the same about Valencia that Roig does about Villarreal. He also gets asked if he would have known the situation would be like this, if he and his brother would have sold their shares of Valencia. As he puts it, they sold them to democratize the club. He also gives his insights of the late 90s of the Valencia, where shares were sold privately, without money getting into the bank of the club.

This situation at the Turia river always make the ché fanbase to ask for Juan Roig to enter the club. Here, Fernando confirms that’s ruled out as Juan is also involved with Villarreal. From there, now the questions go around Valencia Basket, and how they manage to win the league against big teams here as Baskonia, Barcelona or Real Madrid.

He gives some interesting insights about his vision of sport and remarks how he wants to advance the Comunitat, and that also involves the football clubs.