It is possible that if Levante were given to choose a Stadium in which to play their matches apart from yours, choose Anoeta. This statement may seem outrageous the day the Valencian team was crushed by the Real in Donostia but it is the day in which it acquires the most validity. If he arrived alive in the last ten minutes of a game in which he received 25 shots, he suffered more than a dozen opportunities, most of them clear, he was hit two sticks, he took several in the line and even his opponent had a goal disallowed for positional offside, it is definitely that the I raised has an affair with Anoeta.
Paco
Lopez He gathered his players in the locker room at halftime and gave them the great news. “Things can't get any better,” the Valencian coach summed up to his squad. And it is that if after the first half that Real had played, Levante only lost by one goal at halftime, things could only improve. Unable to leave not their field but, on occasions, their own area, asphyxiated by the advance pressure of the Real, which was the key tool to win the game, and by some improper errors of their defenses in the deliveries, the Levante survived a post, a heads up, a penalty missed by Oyarzabal and several more clamorous occasions of the Real one.
“The game is where we want it,” the Levante coach had to reaffirm at halftime to his men, objectively exhausted after their Cup match against Athletic. But things got even worse in the resumption. Goal annulled to Merino, a ball taken under sticks by Duarte to Januzaj when he sneaked in, a headbutt from Zubimendi to the crossbar, another hand in hand with For your… Perfect, I would insist Paco. With ten minutes to go, only Levante lost 1-0 and was preparing to score in Anoeta for the ninth time in its twelve visits to First Division. As if not to be confident.
The game ended up being a test of patience and personality for the Real, overcome with character and football. The exhibition did not help him achieve the distance that would have turned the score into a win, but it did show that he reaches the decisive moment of the season with his football records at the peak. So much so that even a black beast like the Levant also got in the way.