Athletic v Sevilla Copa del Rey Preview – Wednesday 2pm GolTV

By: Anthony | March 3rd, 2009

Tomorrow’s the big day. The moment of truth. Crunch time if you will.

We travel to Bilbao to take on Athletic Club in the second leg of the Copa del Rey semifinals in a match which basically means everything. Athletic definitely isn’t in contention to win anything else this season and us ourselves have quite the task ahead of us if we want to dream about winning the league which isn’t totally out of sight. That being said, the Copa del Rey is probably the main priority for both sides.

Just last Saturday we played the Basque side in their own venue of San Mamés and defeated them 2-1 with Kanouté putting on a show of master-class finishing. Tomorrow however will be a whole other story as both teams will be looking to step place in the final for some silverware.

Athletic despite their poor form for most of this year are no pushovers and are actually the most successful team to ever play in this competition, winning it a total of 24 times. Most of those however were during their glory years which let’s just say, haven’t been for some time now.

We go into Bilbao with a 2-1 lead we picked up at home when Lautaro Acosta grabbed a last minute winner and put us ahead for the away leg. A few weeks ago I would have said that it’s going to be an extremely difficult result and due to Athletic’s usual home advantage it would be really tough for us. This however has all changed seeing as the Basque side hasn’t won in 8 league matches and not to mention we also outplayed, outclassed, and outscored them on the weekend in our 2-1 triumph.

Like in the first leg of the Copa clash Athletic did lead us on the weekend but we were just too much and came back to win.

I can’t see this result going anyway except in our favour as we’ve definitely found some form at the moment and I don’t see tomorrow changing anything. Sure Fernando Llorente was rested on the weekend for Athletic but we also rested players like Jesús Navas and Adriano.

Speaking of resting, there was a lot of rumours earlier this week that Fabiano would indeed return for tomorrow’s clash and since Jiménez has included him in a squad of 18 that will travel to the Basque Country. Whether he starts or comes off the bench is unknown but he will definitely be present.

Other two injury strugglers – Koné and Escudé will not take part in any way as they are not 100% match fit yet so they will stay in Nervión to work on that.

The squad will look like this: Palop, Javi Varas, Mosquera, Squillaci, Konko, David Prieto, Adriano, Fernando Navarro, Fazio, Romaric, Renato, Duscher, Jesús Navas, Acosta, Capel, Perotti, Kanouté y Luis Fabiano

With Kanouté and Navas absolutely tearing apart defenses lately I don’t see any way we won’t win this and the scoreline should be about the same as the previous two matches: 2-1.