football rambles

 After a long walk to the seafront we went on another long walk to Mestalla and another long walk to the top of the stand at La Mestalla to watch Valencia take on Granada. I had hoped that Valencia would have started Yaremchuk, but he was on the bench, which I kind of expected anyway. La Mestalla is a spectacular stadium, although I do feel that the warnings of getting vertigo in the stand we were in are a bit exaggerated.  I was blown away by the stadium and the atmosphere around rather than in the ground. Unfortunately, the game didn't live up to the settings. It was short on quality and chances and decided by a penalty - the second shout for one that Valencia had had.  Most of the first half had been characterised by Granada trying to stop Valencia playing by any means possible. The fact that the goal came in the 7th minute of stoppage time at the end of the first half from Pepelu penalty, sums up what was going on. The second half wasn't much better as both teams seem...

 Last weekend I was in Valencia and visited Ciutat de Valencia to witness Levante draw 2-2 with Mirandes and the Mestalla to see Valencia win 1-0 against Granada. What an amazing weekend it was. I am missing Posh v Cambridge today as my bank and health needs to recover after a fabulous few days in Valencia.

  This is another one of those warm weather scarves, it comes from my first trip to a foreign football ground when I went to the opening game of the  1994 to 1995 season at the Vincente Calderon stadium - a long time before they went to the Wanda Metropolitan.  It was a decent game, but didn't go the way that Atleti would have wanted it to with Valencia claiming a 4-2 victory. Mijatovic helped himself to a hat-trick and in the video below you can see why it is sometimes important to try and stay on your feet! The other Valencia goal came from Salenko and Pirri and Caminero scored for Atleti.

I have often wondered why the bat appears on the top of the Valencia badge and after we added the badge to the collection I thought that I had better find out. The badge is based on the coat of Arms of Valencia: The coat of arms of the city is in fact the coat of arms of James I of Aragon who conquered the Balearics and Valencia in the first part of the thirteenth century. But why did he have a bat in his coat of arms? Nobody really knows why, it could be that bats were and are simply common in the area, and this sounds like the most likely explanation. Less likely theories include that a bat landed on his flag when he was entering Valencia to take it back from the Moors in 1238 and he added it to his coat of arms then.