Valencia U21

Mestalla sits several tiers below Valencia's first team by rule — Spanish reserve sides are barred from sharing a division with the senior squad — and this season the club is doing its talking abroad rather than at home: in the Premier League International Cup, Mestalla were leading their group as of December 2025, building on a run that took them to the quarter-finals in 2022/23 without conceding a goal in the group stage. The club started life in 1944 as Club Deportivo Mestalla, an independent outfit that only became Valencia's official reserve team in 1991, taking the name Valencia CF Mestalla. It has managed both: 8 Tercera División titles, the most recent in 2021-22, sit alongside a Spanish amateur championship from 1942. Gaizka Mendieta spent two seasons in Mestalla colours before making his first-team debut in June 1993. David Silva came up through the same academy pipeline a decade later, leaving for the senior side after the 2004-05 season. Ferran Torres played his way through Mestalla across 2017-18 and 2018-19 before his own move upstairs.