V.Valdés - Víctor Valdés Arribas - Biography

Víctor Valdés joined the Barça youth programme from the Peña Barcelonista 'Cinc Copes' on July 1st, 1992.

In September of the same year he moved with his family to Tenerife and didn't rejoin the club until three years later.

After quickly proving his worth with the youth teams and Barça B, in the 2002-2003 season, Valdés was promoted to the first team squad. At first, he competed for a place with Roberto Bonano, but when Radomir Antic took over as manager midway through the campaign, he became the regular first choice stopper.

He consolidated his place as in the starting line-up in the 2003-04 season, playing in almost every Barca match and posting some first class performances as the side finished second in the league table.

For several seasons, Barça had not had a definitive first-choice goalkeeper for any considerable length of time, but that all changed with the consolidation of Valdés among the elite in the 2004-05 season, which ended with the team winning the Liga title and the goalkeeper collecting the Zamora Trophy for the best defensive record of the season.

In the 2005-06 season, Valdés was one of the key players in Barça's League and the Champions League double. Especially memorable are the crucial saves he made in the final in Paris as Barça won the title for the second time.

In the 2006-07 season, Valdés remained a fixture in the Barça goal and played in all 38 League games. In the 2007-08 campaign he only stood down in the last three matches to give José Manuel Pinto a chance to make his first team debut. All this time, Valdés had been improving and was well on course to becoming the man to have worn the coveted number one jersey the most times for the club.

In the 2008/09 season, his consistency won him his second Zamora trophy. He played every league game bar the last three when the title was already decided. He culminated the season with a stellar performance in Rome, where became the first Barça keeper to be crowned champion of Europe twice.

That was just the start of it, and in the 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12 seasons he won the Zamora for the third, fourth and fifth times, thus equalling the record of the legendary Antoni Ramallets, the only previous five-time winner for Barcelona. The fourth of those titles was his best record ever, and the second best in the entire history of the Spanish championship (0.50 goals conceded a game). Valdés also became the only Barça keeper to appear in three European Cup finals, and won them all.

His consistently strong performances at club level earned him a trip to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, where he collected a winners medal despite watching all of the action from the substitutes’ bench. Since then he has been a regular member of Spain’s international squad.

But rather than individual honours, it is what his exceptional ability has done for the benefit of the team in general that really matters, and he once again played a significant role in the conquest of the club’s fourth Champions League title at Wembley on May 28, 2011.

On November 1, 2011, in a game against Viktoria Pilsen, Valdés broke Miguel Reina’s club record for the most minutes without conceding a goal, an incredible 896. Two months later, on September 10, 2011, Víctor Valdés also broke Andoni Zubizarreta’s record for the most appearances in goal for FC Barcelona when he took to the field against Real Sociedad, his 411th official match for the club.

Víctor Valdés also surpassed another club legend in the 2011/2012 season. The goalkeeper equalled the 449 appearances of Carles Rexach when Barça played Athletic Bilbao, meaning he now has the fourth highest number of official appearances ever for FC Barcelona. Only Xavi Hernández, Carles Puyol and Migueli have played in more games.