While Óscar Sánchez was still digesting Mestalla’s defeat against UCAM Murcia (1-0), while pondering what might have gone wrong, his phone rang. Events had accelerated at the club on Sunday and, following the dismissal of CEO Ron Gourlay, Braulio Vázquez, the new sporting director of Valencia, asked him to take charge of the first team in place of Carlos Corberán while the club searched for the right person. The 47-year-old coach from Murcia, with no experience in the First Division as a coach, accepted the challenge and began thinking about Alavés and how to improve a squad wounded from its position at the bottom of the table after a dreadful start to the league.
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“I sleep little. You get older and maybe that’s it,” he warned, with a smile, the thirteenth occupant of the bench — up to 18 coaching changes have occurred since Peter Lim arrived 12 years ago. “In the afternoon we saw what we might face against Alavés, how to prepare today’s session and I approached it with total naturalness, as I would have done at Mestalla.”
The interim coach will make his debut this Tuesday (20:00, Dazn) at Mendizorroza against an Alavés that is the first surprise of the season after winning three of five matches and conceding only one defeat, a record that has taken them to third place in the standings. But Sánchez, who showed character and personality in his first press conference, is convinced that Valencia can take off again. “When you come from losing four matches, apart from tactical aspects, the important thing is emotional. There is a good team, good guys, guys eager to reverse the situation and bring joy to the fans. You just have to show them they are good,” he explained.
The new coach said he has received a “very good” welcome and has seen a “very receptive” group. For his part, the challenge fulfills a coach who arrived in Valencia in 2024 to lead the youth team, which he made champion of its group and took to the Champions Cup final, which they lost to Betis, after eliminating Barcelona and Real Madrid. On March 24, 2026, he replaced Miguel Ángel Angulo at the helm of the reserve team and six months later he will sit on the Mendizorroza bench to lead a Valencia that recovers Guido and Luis Rioja.
His football idea is always the same, whoever is in the squad, he explained. “I try to make the teams very clear about what we want to play. We care about who is in front, of course, but we don’t want it to condition us. I want the team to be brave, to try to go after the opponent and, when it’s time to suffer, that we all suffer together. That the team puts passion and enthusiasm into it.”
No one knows how long his time with the first team will last, but the man from Murcia has very clear priorities. “If the fans see a recognizable team, everyone will reengage. I came here as a player and when Mestalla is fired up, it wins matches. That made you come a bit scared…”
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Óscar Sánchez, who did not avoid any questions, also had kind words for his predecessor, Carlos Corberán. “The previous coaching staff had the team very well worked out. Carlos’s dismissal, on a personal level, I have to say it has been sad because he always cared about the reserve team. He was the first to care about the team and about me. Surely many things were done very well and now we just have to put our stamp on it.”
The new coach forged his career as a player mainly in two teams: Valladolid, where he played seven seasons — four in the First Division and three in the Second — and Murcia, where the left-back became captain of his hometown team. He hung up his boots there.
Then he needed time to fall in love with football again. “When I was a player, I wasn’t very interested in coaching, but in recent years I started to care a bit about the game and why things were done. I was lucky to start alongside a great coach — José Manuel Aira, at Murcia — and I learned a lot from him. I’ve had great coaches in my career and now it turns out I enjoy football, I live it with passion and sometimes I even enjoy it more than when I played. I’m delighted to dedicate myself to this.” In 2018 he became the sporting director of the Murcia team and later was an assistant in the French second league for a few months before joining the technical staff of Cultural Leonesa. Always as an assistant coach, also at Marbella, until in 2021 he signed as head coach of Orihuela, in the Third Division, a team he would promote to the Second Federation in 2023.
His career is short, but he is seen as a determined man with clear ideas. He faces his debut this Tuesday with great optimism. “I go with the confidence of seeing that they have trained well and that I have seen them with enthusiasm and great desire,” he said. “I have seen a responsible dressing room. As soon as the results start to come, which will be soon, that enthusiasm will do them a lot of good.”
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