Sevilla’s 4–1 Victory Proves Magic of La Liga

What a shame that the inau­gural tele­vised match of the new La Liga sea­son was not shown world­wide due to dis­putes between TV com­pa­nies in Spain. Let’s hope they get their issues resolved quickly so we don’t miss any qual­ity soccer.

So instead of see­ing the Madrid derby between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, the first tele­vised match of the 2007/2008 sea­son we wit­nessed was Sevilla against Getafe. After watch­ing a morn­ing full of Pre­mier League soc­cer, it was soon very appar­ent how much of a gulf there is between the tal­ent in the Eng­lish league and La Liga.

With­out a doubt, the first half of the Sevilla match was far more enter­tain­ing than the three EPL matches com­bined that I watched ear­lier that day (Sun­der­land v Liv­er­pool, Arse­nal v Man City and Ever­ton v Black­burn). The Span­ish league game was much more open, skill­ful and more beau­ti­ful to watch than the Pre­mier League variety.

In the first half of the match, Getafe took a shock lead with a fan­tas­tic free kick that swept over the defen­sive wall and into the back of the net. Later in the first half, two Getafe play­ers were shown the red card and before the half-time whis­tle blew, one Sevilla player col­lapsed and swal­lowed his tongue caus­ing a panic among the play­ers and med­ical staff on the pitch.

It was also a plea­sure to hear the return of GolTV’s Ray Hud­son and Lind­sey Dean behind the mics as they deliv­ered a solid commentary.

Sevilla, despite no Dani Alves and a poor start to the match, quickly over­came Getafe in the sec­ond half with some won­der­fully taken goals (most of which were car­bon copies of each other — crosses com­ing in from the left wing by Duda for Sevilla attack­ers to meet the ball by head or foot in the box.

Sevilla’s man­ager, Juande Ramos, will undoubt­edly sleep easy tonight after his side’s 4–1 vic­tory against Getafe.