On the morning after the worst flood in Spain’s history killed 223 people and devastated the Valencia region, Villarreal flew back into the city from a Copa del Rey tie in Mallorca, the scale of the devastation laid out below them so great that Ayoze Pérez insists all football should have been postponed immediately. Instead, it took until the following afternoon for confirmation that their match against Rayo Vallecano and Real Madrid’s visit to Mestalla would not be played while the rest of the week’s first division’s fixtures went ahead, a decision that was universally criticised and that the former Leicester striker considers inconceivable.
Pérez believes that while players might have lacked the collective voice or power to refuse to play, they should not even have needed one. “We shouldn’t have reached the point that coaches and players had to come out and give their opinion, because ultimately it’s so clear,” the Villarreal forward said. “When the circumstances are so, so hard, we should not have to reach a conclusion that’s obvious. We’re talking about a catastrophe. The decision should have been taken in minutes; what we all thought [that we should not play] was the most normal thing in the world. We had to be at Valencia’s side. Football comes second, or third. What mattered was all those people affected.”
The following weekend, Villarreal returned to action against Alavés, which also felt wrong: playing all in black, a silence and an emptiness was obvious. “The minute’s silence was very emotional,” Pérez said. “Villarreal is so close to Valencia that we were so conscious that it was not the best conditions in which to play a game. The decision was not in our hands; we had to play, and so we did. But we all agreed that we shouldn’t have.”
The rest of the first and second division teams in the Valencia region also played with only the city’s two clubs, Valencia and Levante, yet to return. Spain’s next two fixtures, against Denmark in Copenhagen and Switzerland in Tenerife, for which Pérez has been called up, will be used to raise funds. Villarreal players have been among those helping out in the areas worst hit.
“We were coming back from Mallorca when it happened. We stayed the night there because of the bad weather and flew the next morning. And that image, what I saw …” Pérez recalled, pausing. “That had such an impact on me, it’s still there. We were coming down to land, and you looked out of the windows of the plane and it was like a film, a catastrophe of such a magnitude that the picture remains in your mind. You start to understand even more clearly the extent of it, how bad the situation is.
“These have been very, very hard days. When you live so close to it, it’s another reality. Everyone is conscious of it, we have all seen videos that make your heart ache but living it so close, you feel it. I live in Valencia. Thank God, I didn’t lose [people] but it’s inevitable that you see terrible situations; there has been a lot of damage, a lot of people affected. What we have to do now is use the voice we have, these games coming up, to help in any way we can. Our focus is Valencia.”
He continued: “We’re all people, we’re conscious of the reality. It’s a catastrophe, something very hard to live through and to still be living through many days later. You have to help, be united. Everything else is secondary now; Valencia has to be our focus, we have to be continuously helping, finding ways to support them, to help them get back to ‘normality’ as soon as possible.”
“That week we trained with the uncertainty about whether you are going to play or not,” Pérez said. “Our game was postponed. Others were played although we all agreed [that they shouldn’t have] and you could feel that there was something missing. People were not fully engaged, their heads were not in it; they were where they had to be. But the person whose decision it was to play – or not – decided to play. And in the end, it was played, mistakenly.”
