Seville 2-Rome 0: Highway to glory

The legion of superstitious that swarms by Nervión, as by any other club in the World, will crucify this chronicler for ensuring that the victory in Duisburg against Rome makes Sevilla an absolute and total favorite to lift their Sixth Europa League in Cologne on the 21st. But the tremendous image that the Lopetegui group gave and the data that comes next force me to get wet with the forecast: every time the Rubicon has passed the round of 16 in this competition, the team of the breed and the courage has ended up winning the Cup. I'm sorry for the bad shallows.

11 days since the last game, they give Gudelj and his coronavirus a lot of questions, or if they ask the jindama that Seville has lived through with which the Serb could have infected several of his teammates and the slip of paper that would have seen in Germany. With or without Covid, Lopetegui cleared the unknowns of the goal and the pivot in the opposite direction (Vaclik, who was expected, and Fernando's headdress did not play) and improvised in the attack with Suso and En-Nesyri, little holders in this end of season. The Roman coach Paulo Fonseca deceived almost nobody: the expected 11 and without risking until the second half Pellegrini, who needs a mask to play.

It sounded Let me entertain you (Let me entertain you) by Robbie Williams and that, to entertain, is what he did In the first half, a fabulous Sevilla, who was tying his rival under Banega's silk baton, how the Argentinian from Sánchez Pizjuán is going to leave, how we are going to miss him. After 10 minutes, the Nervión team had already created two clear scoring chances: A shot from Ocampos to which the ex-poet Pau López responded and a header from Koundé to the crossbar. The perfect Sevilla mixed the short touch, the long ball and the verticality of its sides and in one of those Reguilón appeared to demonstrate that perhaps Real Madrid is wrong selling him. The left-hander had finished LaLiga with a great goal against Valencia and repeated in Duisburg. He searched the interior of the area like lightning and in an unorthodox but effective way beat Pau short (1-0, 21 ') to capture Sevilla's superiority on the scoreboard.

35 'minutes took Rome to appear with some danger in the area of ​​his rival, but before Navas had also been able to stretch the result. En-Nesyri ended up achieving it after a spectacular gallop of the almost unstoppable Ocampos (2-0, 44 '). The Moroccan striker, one of the line-up's surprises, insisted on looking for the backs of the three Roman defense with a lot of intelligence to relieve the team several times of the pressure. Lopetegui's tactical genius put his speed and deserved award the goal to the match of the battering ram.

Roma shyly stretched, but was also inferior in the second half. Mkhitaryan tried it with pride, Dzeko took off a second from the implacable (what a great Brazilian) Diego Carlos to make a good half-turn that went high and Carles Pérez, the Barcelona player, gave some minimal substitute between the lines. But who deserved to score the most goals was Sevilla again. And in fact he scored: Koundé had excess braids so that he did not cancel himself somewhat out of play. Banega ended his new exhibition with a tracing of his fault in San Mamés that this time stayed on the crossbar and the French center-back, who wants to one day win a Ballon d'Or, almost made it 3-0 with a header that Pau López responded in almost the only decent intervention by the Catalan goalkeeper. Dream, sevillistas: the King is already entering his highway to glory.