Sevilla 2 – Villarreal 3–Sunk By The Yellow Submarine, Go get’em King!

By: Ryan | November 12th, 2007

Sevilla went into El Madrigal in Villarreal looking for a win and went home with a gutwrenching loss at the hands of Villarreal, and a rather questionable referee.

Unfortunately I was not able to see the match as all of my random feeds from Dijibouti were not working, or were showing other games on said feed. So I fired up my Cadena Ser broadcast and was all ready to go.

There were highlights floating around on the internet, but they got deleted as of last night, so this will all be by imagination. And Marca my favorite paper won’t even let me watch the highlights because apparently my IP address isn’t authorized to watch it, even though it is a free site. Maybe they don’t want La Liga to get outside of Spain? Who knows.

The starting lineup for Sevilla was

L. Fabiano–Kanouté
Adriano–Keita–Poulson–Navas
Casado–Drago–Mosquera–Alves
Palop

The first half saw a Sevilla squad again playing a newbie in the backline, this time it was Casado, a 21 year old outside back called up from the Cantera for this game thanks to the constant injury problems we are having in our back four.

Both Sevilla and Villareal came out attacking in the first half, creating numerous opportunities. Villarreal struck first blood in the 30th minute with Guille Franco scored on a header inside the box off of a free kick. Sevilla had problems defending this type of ball all day long.

Sevilla came back firing with a great individual play by Poulson in the middle. He beat two defenders and served a great ball on the floor to Luis Fabiano in the box, who passed it across the box to Kanouté who tapped it in to tie the score. Villarreal players argued he was offsides, but Kanouté was on by a mile.

The story of the first half was the red card given to Dani Alves. Alves was booked for a foul in the middle of the first half, and was subsequently sent off after a supposed ‘deliberate’ handball about 35 yards outside of the goal. I understand the need to card players for deliberate handballs, but Alves knows he had a yellow and is not about to stick his arm up in the air to knock down a cross coming from the other side of the parking lot. However, the ref didn’t see it that way, and sent him to the locker room.

The second half started and Sevilla, down to 10 men, came out firing. Luis Fabiano struck on a corner kick that gave him his 8th goal on the season, and the La Liga lead. This proved to be one of the lone bright spots for the side from Andalucia as the rest of the half saw Sevilla defending back in their own end. Villarreal were sending in ball after ball from both sides of the field and Sevilla were not defending them well. A few spectacular saves from Palop, and a bit of luck helped keep the lead for Sevilla until the 67th minute when Franco struck on another free kick, this time from the right side. Sevilla could not get a head on the cross and Franco headed the ball home. Palop also got caught in no-mans-land, which is deadly for a goalkeeper. He started to come out, but then hesitated, and by the time he recovered it was too late.

Jesus Navas had a brilliant chance about midway through the second half. He streaked in on goal, all alone from the right side, but his well placed shot hit the post and careened out of harms way. Jesus Navas is a great player, but sometimes he really struggles to finish.

Villarreal kept up the pressure and in the 85th minute, they were awarded a penalty on a questionable foul in the box by Mosquera on Mati Fernandez. I admit that Mosquera didn’t have the best of days, but really, it wasn’t that bad of a foul, Fernandez must have been hit by a gust of wind.

Fernandez stepped up and nailed the penalty to the left of Palop who dove to the right and that was all folks.

Villarreal 3 – Sevilla 2

Game Notes

–Sevilla had problems defending the lateral crosses all night, and this proved to be their downfall. I’ve never seen them defend that poorly on crosses, but with the string of injuries we have had in the back, it should be expected.

–Casado was subbed out soon into the second half after apparently injuring his knee while defending on the wing. Chalk up another defender to the injury ward.

–The sending off of Alves was a joke, and the ref was quite trigger happy with the yellow cards, giving out 10 in total. He seemed to let the game get away from him at points (i.e. the penalty in the last 5 minutes)

Sevillista del Día

My SDD today was none other than Luis Fabiano. What a season he is having. Fabiano currently is the Pichichi in La Liga, with 8 goals and leads the likes of the Argentinian hearthrob himself Leo Messi, Agüero, Rossi and Güiza, all with 7. Fabiano set up Kanouté brilliantly for Sevilla’s first goal, and was a threat all game long. I may have been one to knock him and his play sometimes, but he has truly been a bright spot for Sevilla the past few games.

And finally today, in case you didn’t see the King of Spain showing that he in fact does have some cojones. Here is the YouTube clip of him, telling Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, ‘Why don’t you shut up?’