Sevilla 2-1 Valencia; “Better late than Never”

By: Anthony | January 29th, 2009

First off I just wanna thank all the Valencianistas for dropping by in the first half for some heated discussion, it was fun. No hard feelings either way, it was all in the spirit of the beautiful game, I think everyone needs to drop their hostility.

But honestly what can I say? My boys never gave up and proved me as well as a lot of people wrong (just like I said they would!!).

Before the match the eerie feeling of Fenerbahçe was haunting me, we got our away goals in Istanbul but then came home, had it all set up for an easy victory, and choked. I was praying that today wouldn’t be the same as Valencia could and would punish us.

The day started off as bad as it could have with Marchena getting the opening goal in the 8th minute off some poor defending by us. I thought we were definitely in for a long night because we came out absolutely flat with no intensity at all, the Racing match was beginning to re-appear all over again.

Valencia at this point basically had one foot in the door of the semi’s, we would have needed 2 goals and right then it didn’t look possible with the way we were playing.

After their goal though Jiménez introduced Capel for Adriano who had looked a bit off the pace due to a slight injury he was carrying and hoping that Diego would inject some speed into our nonchalant side.

It took a while, but it ended up working out. On the 36th minute, Capel was fouled near the half way line, so Romaric took the inswinging freekick and found the head of Kanouté who placed it perfectly past César. The Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán erupted and we were all square again.

Literally just two minutes later Fabiano was sent in by Kanouté perfectly but could only find César with his finessed shot.

In the second half we dominated, sure Valencia did enjoy a few spells of decent possession here and there as well as create a couple chances but today was about us. Fabiano had numerous attempts on goal but a pat on the back to César as he played out of his skin to keep Valencia in the match. Renato was brought on for Duscher so we would now have two attacking central midfielders in hopes of creating more chances.

With just one minute from time though we had a corner which looked to be probably our last chance. And it was deserved!!! The corner was swung in and when the Valencia defenders failed to clear, Squillaci pounced and put the ball in the back of the net, of course also proving to be the winning goal. Once again the fans all around El Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán went insane and I think half the credit of this victory is due to them, they were solid all night and never stopped singing, even when we were one down.

With our last-minute winner it means we now go to the semi’s of the Copa del Rey for the fourth time in six seasons, a pretty impressive record if I do say so myself. We also could win it for the second time in three seasons, not too shabby.

The team deserved it, they actually went out to play today. Now sure you can say we qualified on an offside goal or whatever other excuse anyone else wants to make but the fact of the matter is – THAT’S FOOTBALL!!! We’ve been on the receiving end numerous times and sure it sucks, but you move on, luckily for once we were on the lucky side.

Not everyone was happy after the match though as Luis Fabiano found out that he has pulled a muscle in his knee causing him to be out a total of two weeks meaning he will miss the next three matches against Sporting this weekend, Athletic in the Copa, and Betis (hijo de puta) the following weekend. Sure it’s a huge blow for the team, but I’d like to see Chevantón come in and regain his confidence to prove as a solid striker partnered with Fredi. It would also be good to maybe see Pukki or Perotti get a game in between there somewhere as well.

We now turn our focus back to La Liga and the upcoming match this Sunday when we travel to Gijón to take on a Sporting side who gave us quite the scare when we played them earlier this season, having just beat them 4-3 in a thrilling matchup. Hopefully this victory over Valencia will give us the morale boost we need to get our league campaign back on track and hopefully we can pass Real Mierda sooner rather than later.

We will also now face Athletic Bilbao in the semi-finals of the Copa, of course a tricky fixture. They actually beat Valencia at San Mames two weeks back in the 90th minute (guess Valencia is used to losing late by now…) and are on some stunning league form recently, we’ll need to go out and perform like we did today to get a result against them.

Until then, it’s been a good day for all Sevillistas, let’s enjoy it while it lasts.

¡¡Vamos mi Sevilla
Vamos Campeón!!