Sevilla FC’s Defeat of Real Madrid Announces Their Presence in the La Liga Title Race

In terms of the foot­ball played on the pitch, the Sevilla — Real Madrid clash qual­i­fied as the best match of the young La Liga sea­son.  Hon­or­able men­tions to Ath­letic Bilbao’s 3–2 vic­tory over Vil­lar­real CF in Round 3 and the pul­sat­ing 2–2 draw between Valen­cia and Atlético Madrid last Sat­ur­day night, but this fix­ture con­tained every­thing that a writer and a sup­porter wanted: back sto­ries prior to the game, vig­or­ous and attack­ing foot­ball, ten­sions boil­ing over the play­ers at hand, and incred­i­ble stops by both goal­keep­ers.  All of these ele­ments amal­ga­mated into an ebul­lient effer­ves­cence of mag­i­cal football.

The story that dom­i­nated this game prior to kick-off was the absence of Cris­tiano Ronaldo due to an ankle injury sus­tained in Real’s 3–0 vic­tory over Olympique de Mar­seille in the Cham­pi­ons League on Wednes­day.  In Real’s Round 2 match-up with Espanyol, Ronaldo started on the bench and only held a 0–1 lead at Estadi Cornellà-El Prat when he came into the game in the 66th minute and imme­di­ately changed the game.  Now that Madrid could not rely on Ronaldo ver­sus a qual­ity side like Sevilla, would Madrid respond pos­i­tively to their first sig­nif­i­cant injury cri­sis of the season?

The first half hour of the match saw Sevilla con­trol the tempo and pos­ses­sion, as they kept Real Madrid on their heels.  Real changed their sys­tem slightly with a 4–2-2–2 with Karim Ben­zema and Raúl up front with Guti and Kaká just behind and Xabi Alonso and Mah­madou Diarra pro­tect­ing the defen­sive four, but this change did noth­ing to pre­vent Sevilla’s waves of attacks.  Man of the match Jesús Navas ran ram­pant down the right flank as Marcelo con­tin­u­ally aban­doned his defen­sive respon­si­bil­i­ties at left back; even when Marcelo stayed dis­ci­plined, Navas went through and around him with rel­a­tive ease.  One of Marcelo’s for­ays into the offen­sive third, how­ever, did result in one of Madrid’s best scor­ing chances in the half when his shot from just out­side the penalty box went a cou­ple of feet wide of Andrés Palop’s near post.  The only neg­a­tives for Sevilla were that they did not cap­i­tal­ize on their numer­ous chances and Sébastien Squil­laci had to be taken out of the game due to injury.  Fer­nando Navarro came in for Squil­laci, reshaped the defense with Abdoulay Konko mov­ing into the cen­ter of defense from right back, Adri­ano switched flanks and went to right back, and Navarro filled in at left back.

Sevilla broke the dead­lock in the 33rd minute, when Jesús Navas headed home the open­ing goal.  The oppor­tu­nity started with Diego Per­otti cut­ting into the penalty area from the left flank.  Tak­ing defend­ers with him, he flicked a back heel into open space down the left wing, where Fer­nando Navarro ran onto the pass and per­fected a pin­point cross to Navas in the box.  Not known for his head­ing abil­ity, Navas would not win many stand­ing aer­ial bat­tles, but the teas­ing cross by Navarro gave Navas the abil­ity to get a run­ning start and beat a ball-watching Marcelo to give Sevilla the 1–0 lead.

The under­ly­ing ten­sion and vis­i­ble frus­tra­tions of Real Madrid came to a head in the 35th minute.  After a foul on Guti, Didier Zokora shouted some nasty words into Guti’s ear, pre­sum­ably for Guti going down eas­ily.  Guti retal­i­ated by get­ting into Zokora’s face, and in response, Zokora put his hands onto Guti’s mouth and shoved him away.  Guti and Zokora nearly came to blows, while Diego Per­otti involved him­self in the mêlée by shov­ing Guti in the back to stand up for his team­mate.  By this time, most of the play­ers tried to sort out exactly what hap­pened and kept each other from wors­en­ing the sit­u­a­tion.  Zokora, Per­otti, and Guti all got yel­low cards, but sym­bol­i­cally, Sevilla showed they were not afraid of Real and fur­ther buoyed them to attack the Real goal.

Until the third minute of the sec­ond half, Sevilla con­tin­ued to boss the game, but a Pepe equal­iz­ing header from a Guti free kick tied the score at 1–1.  In less than thirty sec­onds, Sevilla went from a poten­tial 2–0 lead and cer­tain vic­tory to a 1–1 dog­fight.  In the events imme­di­ately pre­ced­ing the Pepe header, Álvaro Negredo showed his speed for a big man and ran down the right wing near the by-line.  He squared the cross across the six-yard box and Per­otti had the sim­ple fin­ish, but some­how, Iker Casil­las got across the goal line and stopped a cer­tain goal at the far post.  Casil­las was in posi­tion at the right goal post to sti­fle any attempt by Negredo to shoot at the near post, but when Negredo passed the ball across the six-yard box, there was a 99.9% chance that a goal­keeper could not recover and get to the other post in that short of a span.  Casil­las got there and stunned Per­otti, the team, and the fans; that is why Iker Casil­las is in that 0.1% of goalkeepers.

That goal tem­porar­ily took the wind out of Sevilla’s sails, and Real Madrid began to take the game to Sevilla for the first time in the match.  Gon­zalo Higuaín replaced an inef­fec­tive and vir­tu­ally non-existent Karim Ben­zema in the 53rd minute and con­tributed almost imme­di­ately with some tren­chant runs and a cou­ple of shots at goal.  Sevilla halted the momen­tum train in the 66th minute when Renato scored to regain the lead at 2–1.  From a short cor­ner, Adriano’s cross picked out an unmarked Renato who headed it towards the left far post for the goal; even the sub­lime Iker Casil­las had no shot this time.

For the rest of the match, they went tit for tat, cli­max­ing on the last move­ment of play in the fourth minute of stop­page time.  After Casil­las saved another shot by Luís Fabi­ano, he quickly punted the ball, and the ball cush­ioned on the chest of Higuaín.  He set­tled it, made a mad dash toward goal, and laid the ball off for Kaká.  Kaká then gave Ser­gio Ramos a lovely through ball at the right side of the penalty area.  Ramos con­trolled the pass with one touch and then gave a last sec­ond, des­per­ate lash at the ball, but it sailed wide of Palop’s near post.  End-to-end action from kick-off to the final whis­tle, lit­er­ally.  A con­clu­sion any less com­pelling would have taken away from a truly scin­til­lat­ing affair.

There are still thirty-two matches left in the sea­son, and this result could have less impor­tance by the end of the cam­paign, but that is for the future to tell.  Many will say that Cris­tiano Ronaldo could have legit­i­mately made the dif­fer­ence in the result for Real Madrid.  That very well may be true, but plac­ing that aside for a moment, for this night, in this con­text, the match of the sea­son shook the play­ers and the observers to their respec­tive cores and wit­nessed grip­ping foot­ball at its very essence.

Sevilla’s 2–1 vic­tory over Real Madrid on Sun­day night sig­naled a change in many people’s minds about La Liga only being a two-horse race this sea­son.  With Real Madrid and FC Barcelona main­tain­ing 100% records through the first five rounds, this talk looked jus­ti­fied, but lurk­ing behind with only one loss was Sevilla.  Dis­re­spected would not be the appro­pri­ate descrip­tion that defined Sevilla’s chances to claim the domes­tic title, but they were cer­tainly over­looked.  Until they engi­neered a con­vinc­ing vic­tory over Barça or Real, they would con­tinue to be the out­siders look­ing into the palace.  They are out­siders no more.

Tagged as: Alvaro Negredo, Andres Palop, Champions League, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Zokora, Diego Perotti, FC Barcelona, guti, Iker Casillas, Jesus Navas, Kaka, karim benzema, La Liga, real madrid, Sevilla FC