Valencia end years of misery at Real Madrid to extend Corberán’s revival | Valencia

“You can’t let yourself be intimidated when you walk into this stadium,” Carlos Corberán said, although almost everybody is, better teams than his taking it in turns to fall to their fate. Valencia weren’t going to back down, even if there were 75,382 people waiting in the Santiago Bernabéu and just 150 of them on your side, wedged out the way high in the north-east corner. If their starting XI did cost €300m, another €120m coming at you off the bench, and only two of yours cost anything at all; if their striker’s signing-on fee would pay your whole squad, and if they’ve won more in 12 months than you have in 20 years. If they’re La Liga’s best home team and you’re its worst away, if they’re chasing the title and you’re running from relegation, 32 points, 47 goals and a world between you.

Not even if your captain is out and two more starters are absent precisely because Saturday at the Bernabéu isn’t really your fight, suspensions sought and served now, resources employed elsewhere. Not when your record against the big three this season says played five, lost five, conceded 20, your right-back is making only his third appearance and the other two ended 1-7 and 0-5. When you haven’t won away in 355 days, 12 cities visited without victory, and haven’t won here in 17 years, back when you were good. When none of your players ever have. Still, Valencia’s coach said the day he went for the first time, you need personality, belief. Even as the bell tolls, the bugle calls and the inevitable’s coming.

Even if you haven’t been playing 10 minutes when the referee gives them a penalty that makes your blood boil and your heart sink.

The clock showed 9.27 on Valencia’s visit to the place that inspired Jorge Valdano to come up with the idea of stage fright, an opponents’ affliction, when Kylian Mbappé was released behind the Valencia defence on Saturday afternoon. As he reached the area, César Tárrega got ahead of Mbappé, who caught the back of the defender’s calf and tumbled, and Guillermo Cuadra Fernández ran up, pointing. Although he got a VAR call inviting him to look again, he decided he was right the first time, so with Carlo Ancelotti signalling from the bench Mbappé threw the ball to Vinícius Júnior: an easy injection of confidence early on an easy afternoon, Valencia defeated before they had begun, just as everyone said they were.

Which was when, standing by the spot, ball under his arm, Jude Bellingham for protection, the Brazilian saw Valencia goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili approach, about to make good on his manager’s words. He had a grin on his face. Glove over his mouth, he leant in: “Do you want to bet on it? €50?” There was a laugh, an OK, just a hint of a handshake, and then Vinícius ran up and hit the penalty low and not very hard and, as Mamardashvili said afterwards: “I won.” Diving beyond the ball, his left knee stopped the shot. Two minutes later – less time than it had taken to confirm the penalty – Mouctar Diakhaby leapt above everyone and thundered a header into the net and Valencia into the lead, silence falling.

Corberán was right: there was a game to be played after all. Before their visit to the Bernabéu, Valencia’s manager had insisted that this is their league but few thought so. Super Deporte had summed it up neatly: “What if …” its cover said, allowing itself briefly to believe, while the small print inside asked only that there be honour, pride and commitment, humiliation avoided. José Luis Gayà, Luis Rioja and Dimitri Foulquier had all collected suspensions the week before, slate wiped clean, ready for meetings with more direct rivals – Espanyol, Las Palmas, Getafe and Alavés – and the coach had admitted that that human resources had to be managed. Yet here they were, leading at the Bernabéu.

Five minutes later, Diakhaby belted a shot into his own net, only for the goal to be ruled out for an offside against Mbappé. Mbappé curled one wide, hit the bar, drew a superb save from Mamardashvili. Bellingham shot past the post. Mbappé forced another stop from Mamardashvili. Then four minutes into the second half, Vinícius got the equaliser. There were 40 minutes left, an eternity with an inevitable ending. Mbappé slid in, just missing one, then set up another for Fede Valverde, six yards out. Somehow Mamardashvili’s left hand got there. Time ticked away, Antonio Rüdiger went up front and then, on 94.11, it happened.

This time though it was at the other end. Hugo Duro leapt, heel first. Diego López sent the ball right to Rafa Mir, who delivered a perfect cross. Flying in, Duro crashed the header home and slid across the grass screaming, everyone on the Valencia bench running towards him except the manager, who took a couple of strides, put the brakes on and turned back, like a naughty schoolboy hoping he hadn’t been seen. There was still time for Mamardashvili to stop Rüdiger on 96 minutes, but Valencia had done it.

As Valverde mumbled something about his mother’s shell and Bellingham booted the VAR screen, Valencia’s players went wild and staff boinged about like Zebedee. “There are no words to describe what we experienced,” Las Provincias claimed. Super Deporte’s front page read: “Yes, yes, yes.” Valencia hadn’t won here since 2008, and even that had been a shock, nostalgia infusing everything. “It was like a parallel world opened up in which Hugo Duro brought the ball down as if he was David Silva. Diego López’s pass to Rafa Mir was worthy of Baraja himself. Dressed as Vicente Rodríguez, Mir crossed for Duro, the reincarnation of David Villa,” El Mercantil Valenciano wrote. This was “pure gold”, “total ecstasy and poetic justice”, they said. “Good triumphed at the Bernabéu.”

Valencia had survived a penalty, a post and 20 shots. The xG said 3.16 to 0.46, and they had scored with two of only three efforts on target – the other, saved by Fran González, came off Diakhaby’s face. But this was not just chance.

They had resisted, sacrificed everything, and when Madrid got through, Corberán said, “they found Giorgi”. A month ago, Mamardashvili, who signed for Liverpool last summer but is staying for a season because Alisson’s time isn’t up just yet, admitted he wasn’t playing well yet here he was outstanding. So too, Diakhaby, scoring 399 days after the terrible knee injury that kept him out a year, circle closing. “It’s an incredible story; I suffered the injury against them and to get the goal at the Bernabéu is madness,” he said. Two subs, bold attacking changes, had won it for them, Duro and Mir combining. And nor was it just them, the one-word judgment on each of “Corberán’s heroes” rolling in like something on a film poster: “Legend”, “Leader”, “Gladiator”, “Colossus” …

“You need four things to win here,” Corberán said, going through them in that rasping, almost whispering voice: personality, concentration, resilience, and the determination to show your virtues, why you’re at Valencia. “You can’t separate the tactical from the emotional,” he said. “You can build a structure but if you don’t dare, if you don’t have the personality, it means nothing. Nothing tactical will ever come off. If you can come here to where we have seen all those heroic comebacks, concede and have the mental strength to stand up and not sink, that’s so important.” And so they had, completing a victory full of meaning, the perfect portrait of Valencia’s revival, like the final step in their recovery, belief unbreakable. “Corberán’s perfect metamorphosis”, one headline called it. Better than Gregor Samsa’s, that’s for sure.

Born in Cheste, 20 miles from Valencia, Corberán joined the club as a goalkeeper aged 12, his grandfather taking him to training daily, but injury ensured he didn’t make it. He worked with Juan Carlos Garrido at Villarreal. Still only 41, he has been in Cyprus and Greece, Leeds too with Marcelo Bielsa, who once claimed he valued Corberán’s opinion more than his own. He took Huddersfield to the Championship playoff final. Meticulous, burdened with an almost excessive sense of responsibility, a man with a PhD in Juanma Lillo, who says there is no detail too small, when he took over at Valencia on Christmas Eve, they were joint bottom, four points from safety. His first game was against Real Madrid: a goal up with five minutes to go, Luka Modric and Bellingham scored on 85 and 95. They had 12 points. Only one team had ever reached halfway with as few and still survived.

Since then, they’ve lost only twice: to Barcelona and Atlético. They have won five of six at Mestalla and lost only one of five away. They arrived at the Bernabéu four points clear of relegation – from 12 points in 17 games under Baraja to 22 in 12 under Corberán – and left again with three more, seven points clear of relegation, the third best in the country in 2025. Yet to beat a big team, they had lost 2-1 to Madrid, 3-0 to Atlético, and 7-1 to Barcelona, and they hadn’t won on the road since April last year. Now, they had done both, refusing to be intimated, no matter what stood before them, Corberán’s first opponents defeated, the cycle complete, victory secured at the Santiago Bernabéu 17 years later.

“It was an exercise in effort, faith and personality. This is for the fans who’ve suffered so much. We owed them this. It’s been a long time and that hurt. We wanted to make them happy,” he said before heading down to dressing room to give players the night off. They had earned it, heading home happy and €50 richer. Or perhaps not. “Vinícius hasn’t paid,” Mamardashvili said as Valencia departed the Bernabéu victorious 17 years later.