Unión Make History In Copa

Real Unión gave the shocker of the year at the Bern­abéu as they elim­i­nated reign­ing league champs Real Madrid from the Copa del Rey.   Many peo­ple in the Span­ish media thought that logic would once again rear its head into foot­ball in Spain, Real Unión decided to repeat their per­for­mance and score another three goals against the goal defended by Jerzy Dudek.

Unión showed the poise of that of a first divi­sion side break­ing down the mid­field scheme of one of the top attack­ing sides in all of Spain.   It would take yet another heroic dis­play by Raúl with his hat-trick and Bueno’s stroke of genius that had them min­utes away from over­com­ing a brave attempt by a min­now.  Raúl though that with his thrid goal of the evening he van­quished yet another oppo­nent that stood in front of some­thing that he so des­per­ately searched for.  The prob­lem there was the his team as well as the peo­ple at the San­ti­ago Bern­abéu for­got that the games are played for 90 min­utes.   All of the bat­tling and scratch­ing and claw­ing that Madrid did in order to come back and come close to van­quish­ing Unión were taken away from them in injury by a name that will live in infamy in Merengue lore– Eneko Romo.

Romo met the cross by Juan in text­book fash­ion and nailed in the upper left cor­ner of Jerzy Dudek; and a Segunda B side deflated the hopes of mighty Madrid of earn­ing their first Copa title in 18 years.

What makes it worse is that Real Unión’s sea­son was made with this per­for­mance; actu­ally their his­tory.  Regard­less of what side of the line you cur­rently live on peo­ple need to know how big of an upset this was.  I can men­tion the obvi­ous.  It is the biggest upset in Copa del Rey his­tory.  It was the first time a ftop flight side ever loss to Segunda B side (third divi­sion) in cup com­pe­ti­tion. Real Unión were 251:1 to win this tour­na­ment while Madrid were 5:1.  Greece was a 150:1 to win back in 2004. Am I say­ing that they will win the Copa del Rey? No.    Their odds to win to move one were as close to even as you could get.   This is why there is talk of cri­sis at Val­dobebes.   Board mem­bers have given their ulti­ma­tum to Bernd Schus­ter.  Either he wins against Val­ladolid or he is out of a job.  What a dif­fer­ence a game makes in big time Span­ish football.

On the other side of the coin, you have the Basque giant killers.  They are now Cin­derella. They are the ones that have cap­tured the head­lines and made a name for them­selves.  They are for­ever etched in history.

More impor­tantly, and at least for two nights, there was one team on the field that was truly Real… and they wore red and black.

Real Madrid 4–3 Real Unión

RUN:  Adv. on away goals.

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Val­ladolid     —     Hér­cules (VLL 5–1)

Espanyol     —     Celta    (even 2–2)

Vil­lar­real     —     Pol. Ejido  (POL 0–5)

Mal­lorca     —     Málaga (even 1–1)

Sport­ing     —     Numan­cia (SPO 1–0)

Recre­ativo     —     Ath­letic (ATB 0–2)
Betis          -    Castel­lón (BET 2–0)
Almería     —     Rayo (ALM 2–1)
Rac­ing     —     Mur­cia (MUR 1–2)

Deportivo     —     Elche (DEP 2–0)
Valen­cia     —     Por­tu­galete (VAL 4–1)
Atlético     —     Ori­huela (ATM 1–0)

Barcelona     —     Benidorm     (BAR 1–0)
Osasuna     —     Getafe (even 0–0)
Sevilla     —     Pon­fer­rad­ina (PON 0–1)

Tagged as: Real Union