CD Cuenca: History of a Valencian Football Club

On May 22, CD Cuenca-Mestallists 1925 celebrated the centenary of its foundation. A few days later, the club validated its accession to 2ª Régional Valenciana, the 8th Spanish level. Presentation of this historic Valencian amateur football place which wrote its most beautiful pages in the shade of Valencia Cf.

During this century of existence, the 1925 Cuenca-Mestallist CD will have had several names, and even several lives. Reformed during the summer of 2020, the club chose the path of popular shareholding, operating on the basis of “a member = one voice”. A renaissance in the very particular context of health restrictions linked to the COVVI-19. His first official match, CD Cuenca-Mestallists, played him in October 2020 on the field of CF Beniparrell in Regional Segunda, an amateur division located at the 8th level of Spanish football. A 3-3 draw with the victory scent for this workforce formed a few months earlier. For history, we will remember that the starting eleven was composed of Robert, Cristian, Airor, Martínez, Álvaro, Flaco, Manza, Tono, Carlos, Navas and Luzán. Anonymous people whose name will remain engraved and occupy a place of choice alongside that of their glorious predecessors.

“One of the major animators in local sport”

Because if a wind of renewal carries the club, its roots are much older. His cradle is indeed CD Cuenca, named after rue de Valence where he was born in 1925, between the districts of Patraix and Arrancapins. First in the form of a Peña founded by Vicente Blas Micó, before officially adhering to the Valencian Football Federation on November 23, 1933. According to historians, the Olimpíada Infantil – organized by Valencia during the summer of 1924 – is one of the events that favored the creation of many clubs in the city. Among the hundreds of young people gathered at the Mestalla stadium, a delegation from rue Cuenca was present. During the 20s and 30s, Valencian football was booming and was already dominated by Valencia and Gimnástico FC, one of the ancestors of the Levante club.

CD Cuenca is born as a neighborhood club. It develops as a real space of sociability, invested by an enthusiastic and fanatic youth of sport. Unlike a multitudes of other projects that will collapse, the CD Cuenca will establish itself as “One of the great animators of local sport”. The reins of the team, engaged in the amateur league, are first entrusted to Rino Costa. The former player who has made his entire career at the Valencia CF then threads the triple coach-player cap.”He was an orchestra man who had a sense of talent and knew how to work with young people”Explains the author José Ricardo March, secretary of CD Cuenca-Mestallists, in charge of the archives and the safeguard of the club inheritance.

The momentum of this first collective will be stopped by the outbreak of the civil war in 1936. But the good work of Rino Costa at CD Cuenca will earn him recruited by the Valencia CF, first to coach amateurs, then the first team during the 1942/43 season. For its part, CD Cuenca resumes its march and won its local championship in 1943/44, its very first official title. He will merge into the process with the amateur section of the Valencian giant to give birth to the Deportivo Mestalla club which will serve as a subsidiary club of Valencia cf. The team lived the following decades in the shade of the spotlights and was forced to nomadism on the land of neighboring localities like Picassent, Sedaví or Catarroja.

Renaissance against the background of a health crisis

It was only with the CDC Mestallists 1925 that the club will find its house in Valence, after fourteen years of vagrancy. He moved to Malilla, near the old field of Norte FC, where CD Cuenca started in the 1930s. An effective return on the occasion of the 2nd day of the championship, October 25, 2020. Several personalities related to local football were present for the occasion including Merchina Peris, daughter of the historic manager Vicente Peris and first woman to score a goal in Mestalla. Most popular shareholding clubs in the Iberian Peninsula were founded during the 2010s.

Journalist by profession, David Laguía Richart, current president and key figure in the CDC Mestallist 1925 project, joined CD Cuenca in 2007. At that time, certain members-Dani Benlloch, Quique Olmos and Toni Calvo-had been committed financially to mop up the debts of the club, generating a new positive dynamic. It is in this dynamic that the rebirth of the CDC Mestallists 1925 was registered, in the form of a popular shareholding club, in 2020. “The months of confinement during the pandemic were used to plan an ambitious project: an in-depth renovation to build the club and guarantee its survival to the centenary and beyond“, Explained David Laguía then at Plaza magazine. The centenary was therefore reached with brilliance.

As a result of the privatization of clubs, transformed into sports limited companies (SAD) in the early 90s and the 2008 economic crisis, Spanish football experienced a revival of club bankruptcies. In response, supporters have set up popular shareholding projects – based on the principle of “a member = one voice” – to build another football. This collective and democratic ambition characterizes the so-called “Fútbol Popular” movement which assumes taking the opposite of the business by handing over supporters at the center of the decision-making process and advocating a more sustainable, without debt mode.

Mario Kemps, honorary president

CD CUENCA-MESTALISTES 1925 is a rare case of popular shareholding created from an already existing club, like UC CEARES founded in 1946. Its full name pays tribute to CD MESTALLA. The new badge – modernized by designer Valencien Pepe Dus – and the green and white colors also refer to the old filial club of Valencia CF. And the mention of “1925” is a nod to the origins of the CD Cuenca. The CDC Mestallists-which proudly sports the “Rat Penat”, the bat symbol of the city, on its escutcheon-takes on the tunes of refuge of the heritage of “Valencianism” in the stormy context that Valencia knows with the management of Peter Lim and its clique.

By offering Mario Kemps the title of honorary president, the 1925 CDC Metalists marked the minds and put the spotlight on the club’s project. The Argentine legend, which put on the Valencia CF jersey on 246 times – between 1976 and 1984 – and made the opposing nets tremble 149 times, is a fervent opponent of Peter Lim, but also to the very influential Jorge Mendes players agent on club transfers. This gives a little more the CDC Mestallists of the tunes of “refuge”.

However, supporting the two clubs has never been contradictory. “” “I will never stop being a supporter of the Valencia Cf. It is my father’s team and I hope it will be that of my children. But Cuenca offers me a different relationship with football. This is not against the idea of supporting the two causes”Summates José Ricardo March. The club indeed addresses his relationship to the“ Ché club ”with a certain lucidity. If he is aware of being part of this great history, it is above all through the fairly unknown trajectory of the CD Mestalla that he maintains this link.“Obviously, it was a different club, although it is their subsidiary team”, Supports David Laguía. A story, made of values and a lot of humility, which continues to write.

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