Player at the heart of Valencia

Should Valencia win tomorrow night's Champions League final at Milan's San Siro stadium, Didier Deschamps will become the first player to lift the trophy with three different clubs, a statistic UEFA media people have been selling hard to the press as an angle this week.

However, it's just a little hard to get excited about the Frenchman's possible achievement, for with the game going the way it is, it won't be long before somebody ends up bidding to take the record into double figures.

Far more remarkable, in fact, is the story of another of Valencia's midfielders, Gaizka Mendieta, a 27-year-old whose regularly formidable and occasionally breathtaking performances for the Spanish club have been enough to have Europe's giants forming an orderly queue outside his door.

While others have cashed in on the club's recent emergence as a force in the continental game, however, Mendieta has achieved cult status among its supporters by sticking around.

Since last year's defeat by Real Madrid in the Champions League final, Valencia coach Hector Cuper has had to cope with the loss of two of the team's key players, midfielder Francisco Farinos and striker Claudio Lopez. But while the resulting alterations have prompted a change in tactics and greater use of the flanks, Mendieta has remained central to Cuper's planning at every stage.

Last year Mendieta's primary role was out wide in midfield but during this campaign he has alternated between there and his preferred position in the centre of the field. Against Arsenal earlier in this year's competition he was outstanding in the middle but he has since sometimes reverted to his more familiar home on the flank, particularly when Miguel Angel Agulo has been ruled out through injury.

With the younger player fit to play tomorrow, the main question facing Cuper as he arrived with his players in Milan yesterday was where he would deploy his captain. So far he has given no indication of what his midfield will look like, although the did say that he had an idea of what his team will be. Even when played out wide Mendieta can, when at his best, exert an astonishing amount of influence over the fortunes of his team.

Discovered by Guus Hiddink and converted from a right back by Claudio Ranieri, Mendieta has spent almost the whole of his professional career with Valencia, although he made few appearances in his first three seasons with the club.

A Basque by birth, he refused to exploit his footballing talent to avoid military service, choosing instead to serve his time doing community work. After returning to the game on a full-time basis, his real breakthrough came in 1999 when Valencia won the Spanish Cup and having contributed a couple of spectacular goals along the way, Mendieta was called up to the national team.

Despite notching up six goals in 26 appearances since then it has been remained something of a struggle for him to become firmly established as a regular starter. His troubles were highlighted at the European Championship last year when Raul missed the penalty that meant France rather than Spain went through to the semifinals. Mendieta, who had already scored from the spot during the game, would have taken the kick, but he had been substituted after 57 minutes.

It was the 12th time in 14 international appearances he made that season that he had failed to play the entire 90 minutes.

Had he accepted one of the offers that had come from Barcelona, Madrid or Milan the previous summer, things might well have been different. Instead, he accepted a long new contract from Valencia, whose president Pedro Cortes described him as "an emblem for the club".

The deal doubled his wages but fell well short of matching what might have been obtained elsewhere.

"Everything I ever wanted as a footballer," he said then, "I achieved in 1999, given that apart from winning the Cup I was called up by Spain and extended my contract with Valencia."

But after last year's crushing defeat by Real, Mendieta has surely added at least one new item to his list of ambitions.