He did the same for his no more glamorous second club, Lan?Four years ago he switched to Mallorca. He took them to the Spanish Cup final in his first season, to the Cup Winners' Cup final in his next. Valencia he has now taken to two consecutive European Cup finals. That is three European finals in a row.What is C?'s secret? First the sine qua non of coaching in the era of the celebrity footballer he commands the unqualified respect of his players Not love Not fear Just respect. And how does he win that respect? Partly because, as people who know him well say, he is straightforward and uncomplicated and never tells a lie. But mostly it is because of the remarkable intensity he exudes. There is no more deadly, deadly serious football man in the world than Hector C?, and his players know it.They also know that he has made each and every one of them into a better performer.
And he does that, as his players ruefully acknowledge, by never giving them a moment to breathe. Unlike Alex Ferguson, who watches training from a distant eyrie, C? is on top of his players, gesticulating, barking instructions every single second of every training session. Meticulous in his preparation for each game, detailed in his study of his rivals' strengths and weaknesses, he demands a huge amount from himself and from his players, all of whom he is relentlessly seeking to improve.And doing so with amazing success. Roberto Ayala and Mauricio Pellegrino, his centre-halves, are rejects respectively from Milan and Barcelona. This season the two have patrolled the meanest defence in Spain and in the Champions' League alongside the two evergreen 35-year-old full-backs, Jocelyn Angloma and Amedeo Carboni. A player who C? is said to hound particularly relentlessly in training, Ruben Baraja, has evolved since joining Valencia a year ago from a journeyman midfielder into an international player, Spain's closest equivalent to Patrick Vieira.C?'s genius is to cajole and squeeze every last ounce of energy and talent from the players at his disposal, then to forge them into a whole that is the expression of his personality: hard as nails, ferociously disciplined, never say die..
The momentary pleasure of victory at the final whistle was quickly replaced for Leeds yesterday by a bitter realisation that it would be followed by a summer of anguish. Leeds were forced to endure a finale when momentary pleasure at victory yesterday was quickly replaced by a bitter realisation that it would be followed by many months of anguish. They may well, ultimately, have been denied a Champions' League position by the miraculous and belated conversion of Liverpool into a side of admirable consistency, culminating in their 4-0 win at Charlton, but they have lived to rue points dropped at home, so profligately, against the likes of Middlesbrough and Manchester City. It was a day when even a bronze medal would have been worth solid gold, both to the Leeds followers and the club's financiers. In the end, Alan Smith's brace and Ian Harte's free-kick proved futile, as David O'Leary's men did all that was asked of them but had to repay the long-term debt of an inauspicious Premiership start, when at one stage they descended to 13th place.To Leeds, victory would have been worth at least the £8m for Champions' League qualification and potentially over £20m by repeating this season's feat of reaching the semi-finals, had Liverpool capitulated at Charlton. In contrast, a win for Peter Taylor's men had a bounty of a mere £600,000, the prize for climbing two places in the table. Neither came to fruition after a contest in which Leicester fought for much of the time as though they were the Anfield men's brothers-in-arms until finally yielding the points which could have been so crucial to Leeds.O'Leary reflected: "My goal now is to win the Premiership next season.
