Sevilla beat Valencia 1:0 at Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán on Friday evening, a result that kept them in third place with ten points from five games while Valencia remain rooted to twentieth with just one.
And here's the thing — the decisive moment came late. Juan Antonio Iglesias Sánchez scored in the eighty-first minute, long after Valencia had killed any sense of urgency in their play. The visitors had possession but went nowhere, their shots off target failing to trouble Odysseas Vlachodimos.
To be fair, the statistics tell a story you'd expect. Sevilla created two big chances and registered an expected goals figure of 1.2, while Valencia managed nothing — zero big chances, 0.08 expected goals. Four shots on target against none speaks for itself.
The pattern emerged gradually. Valencia started with 54 per cent possession but their passes into the final third numbered just 56, compared to Sevilla's 115. They had more aerial duels but won fewer, and their two yellow cards — Ryunosuke Sato and Pablo Maffeo — came as the game settled into a rhythm neither side could break.
By then, substitutions changed nothing. Valencia brought on César Tárrega Requeni in the twenty-fourth minute, then doubled the change in the sixty-second and sixty-third. Sevilla responded with Youssouf Fofana in the seventy-first, then brought on four players together in the eighty-third, including Javi Guerra and José Gayà.
I had Sevilla winning before kickoff, though my confidence sat at forty-two per cent. It was never going to be a showcase — both sides showed little penetration, and the match decided itself in those final ten minutes when Sevilla finally found their edge.
