Sevilla met Barcelona at home in the Spanish Cup semi-finals



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Ronald Koeman’s team seriously complicated the task before the second leg.

Sevilla v Barcelona, ​​Getty Images

Sevilla v Barcelona, ​​Getty Images
February 10, 2021, 11:52 PM

In the middle of this week, the Royal Spanish Football Federation, together with the rest of the European countries, took out the matches of the National Cup, which has already reached the semifinal stage in its draw. One of the couples in this round seriously outperformed the rest in terms of public involvement: Andalusian Seville started the two-legged match against Catalan Barcelona with a home game.

The teams of Julen Lopetegui and Ronald Koeman approached the informative duel in excellent form, having behind them an impressive winning streak. This helped them in the classification of the Spanish League, being in neighboring positions in the group of persecutors of Atlético de Madrid, and also guaranteed them a serious level of competition directly on the field of the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán stadium. In addition, at home, the nervianos have repeatedly brought serious problems to the representative of Catalonia.

The guests spent the first minutes of the match in their usual control of the ball in an outer half of the field, and weak offers in attack from their opponents only helped Barcelona to speed up the pace of the game. In the first moment of the game, probably – the closest to the Blaugranas’ goal – Kuman’s team managed to create already in the 11th minute, when Messi could not shoot over Boone, completing Griezmann’s shot to the someone’s left corner. another penalty area.

After this alarming signal, Julen Lopetegui’s team quickly regained consciousness, responding not only by aggravating the situation, but by scoring a goal directly. Umtiti’s central defender Kunde’s unexpected movement from the right wing to the other’s penalty area, which was accompanied by a quick wall with Fernando and the ball that passed between Umtiti’s legs, ended with a blow under the far post. The defense and the Barcelona goalkeeper had too many questions in this situation.

Marc-André ter Stegen managed to partially rehabilitate before the teams went to half-time, stopping a shot under the crossbar by Escudero from the entrance on the left side of the penalty area in a beautiful jump. But from the French central defender of the guests, we did not see such attempts to “apologize” in front of the fans. In addition, Umtiti failed again at the end of the game when he slipped past Rakitic down the left wing in the 85th minute, after which the Croatian marked the final score of the game with a shot to the near corner.

What happened between scoring episodes with both teams? The situation has not changed at all since the beginning of the first half. Sevilla relied on counter-attacks on the wings, while Barcelona put a similar emphasis, but on positional play. Lopetega’s tactics were more successful. The “blue garnets” were too modest in the end, always trying to find Messi for the decisive blow, as if there was no one else to distinguish goals in their composition.

Similarly, several full-blown scoring opportunities were missed, and Bunu calmly coped with what managed to lead to a shot on goal. Among other things, the guests failed to properly implement the pressure from the other side, so their rivals had the opportunity to go from a long pass to a counterattack.

At the end of regulation time, this resulted in the aforementioned goal from Rakitic, who, as promised before the game, did not celebrate the goal he scored against the former team. And it was ugly to run around Lionel Messi: The Argentine played the 900th game of his career, no matter how.

The return match between Catalan Barcelona and Andalusian Seville will take place at the Camp Nou stadium on March 3.

Seville – Barcelona 2: 0
Goals: Kunde, 25, Rakitic, 85

Seville: Buno – Vidal, Kunde, Carlos, Escudero (Munir, 69) – Hordan (Goodel, 80), Fernando, Rakitic – Suso (Torres, 81), En-Nesiri (Rekik, 70), Gómez (L. de Jong, 69 ).

Barcelona: ter Stegen – Firpo, Mingesa, Umtiti (Trinkan, 90), Alba – de Jong, Busquets, Pedri (Puch, 85) – Dembélé, Messi, Grizmann.

Notices: Hrodan, Escudero, Vidal – Alba.



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