How Good Are Sevilla?

kinaldo

A lot of noise coming from Spain about how good they are and could go all the way this season.

I've only seen them play once and they were well beaten by Barcelona at the Nou Camp.

Tonight they thrashed Grasshoppers Zurich 4-0 away from home in the Uefa Cup.

In the Spanish Primera they're in 2nd place, 1 point behind Barcelona and 2 points ahead of Real Madrid after 12 round / table

They have a 100% home record this season and beat expected challengers Valencia 3-0 a couple of weeks ago.

They're also the current Uefa Cup holders, as well as European Super Cup holders having thrashed a very determined Barca team.

In the last 2-3 seasons they've lost star player like Reyes, Ramos and Baptista

- the sale of the latter two had fans calling for their chairman's resignation.

Oh and their talisman is ex-Spurs/West Ham striker, Freddie Kanoute - second top scorer in the league with 9 this season.

Xavi6

They are an excellent side. Saw them play Barca off the pitch in the European Super Cup and was very impressed. Really like Puerta who plays on the left hand side. Dani Alves is the perfect little thug of a right back and I've always been a fan of Julen Escude (once a target for Man. Utd when he wasa at Rennes).

While the win over Valencia was emphatic it's important to bare in mind the quality of players Valencia have been missing this season. Ruben Baraja is barely fit, Albelda and Vicente are out long term, and a number of youth players have been shoved into the limelight for difficult debuts.

Overall they are a great side but will they last the pace? I'm not so sure.

kinaldo

Xavi6 wrote:

Ruben Baraja is barely fit, Albelda and Vicente are out long term

Not anymore. Vicente came on after 15 minutes at the weekend for injured David Villa, and Baraja played really well for the full 90.

kinaldo

They missed the chance to go top this weekend after Barcelona slipped up at Levante last night.

Kanoute gave Sevilla the lead away to Espanyol with his 10th La Liga goal of the season making him joint top scorer but the home team scored twice in the 2nd half, the winner coming on 80 minutes before having a player sent off - exciting stuff!

Elsewhere, Atlético Madrid are back in the chase and only 6 pts behind Barca after winning 1-0 away to Real Betis. Their keeper had to save two penalties! Valencia are now well and truly out of it after losing again, 2-0 at Recreativo Huelva this time.

Real Madrid can go within 1 point of Barcelona if the beat Athletic Bilbao at the Bernabéu tonight.

kinaldo

So a great weekend for Real Madrid with Barcelona and Sevilla finally slipping up, plus a hard fought win over the shirt sponsor-less Sunderland lookalike Basques. The importance of that win is best conveyed in a rare display of manic fist clenching emotion from Fabio Capello.

The introduction of Ronaldo and Beckham at half-time completely changed the game for them when it was starting to look like Celta Vigo all over again. Roberto Carlos scored the winner late on with his 70th goal for the club in 10 seasons - not bad for a defender!

Very brief highlights

Only 2 points now separate the top 3 sides in Spain, and I don't think anyone can really argue that it's the tightest and most exciting/competitive league in Europe this season. The quality of football on display tonight was again mostly brilliant. Robinho in particular is a joy to watch, as is Ronaldo who continues to defy the laws of gravity.

MrJoeSoap

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/12/11/why_sevilla_have_the_credentia.html

In the Bar Remember, just off Avenida Kansas City near Santa Justa station, a short, shiny-headed man with an important air is wearing a sharp suit, a pair of glistening cufflinks and a smile the size of his ego. Which is going some for a bloke who once described himself as the most important man in Seville after the Pope and who, as a high-powered lawyer to the rich, famous and seriously crooked, also represents the country's most legendary Flamenco singer. But then tonight, it is also hardly surprising.

His name is José María Del Nido and as the cigar smoke swirls and the gin and tonic tumbles into goldfish bowls, people queue to shake his hand and pat him on the back, even though they really shouldn't touch what they can't afford. Television sets all over the bar beam La Sexta on a loop. It is gone 3am, a good hour and a half since, just across the road, the Real Madrid team trudged sadly on to their train and back to the capital without saying a word, and on the screens the reason is clear: Sevilla are putting them to the sword. No wonder Del Nido's beaming; Sevilla, after all, are his team, a team that's just proven that their challenge for the league title is very real. And how.

In recent years, Sevilla v Real Madrid has been a roaring, noisy cracker - 4-3 last season, 2-2 in 2004-05, 4-1 in 2003-04 - and this was no exception: a heavyweight clash between two clubs that are now serious rivals, a test of their title credentials. As Real Madrid arrived, their coach was stoned, bricked, iced and snooker-balled, having already survived an arson attack in the hotel car park the night before under cover of darkness and the handy distraction provided by the hotel's other guests - the candidates for Miss Sevilla 2006.

That was just the start, too. Inside the Sánchez Pizjuán on Saturday night, 45,000 paying fans and eight mullet-wearing bad-boys bundling their way past a bemused security guard had the place rocking; bangers shook the ground; a huge banner declared the journalistically inspired Biris the Guardians of Nervión; and a mosaic covered the rest of the stadium, gold, red and white on one side, Telepizza on the other (not literally, obviously - that'd be rather messy). There was a special welcome for Madrid's ex-Sevillistas: Sergio Ramos greeted with whistles and boos and José Antonio Reyes greeted with cheers to reflect the fact that one left paying his buy-out clause, the other in the back of a taxi crying his eyes out. And before kick-off, fans whipped out their sparklers, waved them in the night air and swayed emotionally to the club's anthem. It was just like an Elton John concert - only without the bloody awful music.

And with some intense, exciting football. David Beckham put Madrid ahead with a fantastic free-kick but Sevilla got an equaliser through top scorer Freddie Kanouté. Ronaldo missed a great chance to win it before Uruguayan striker Ernesto Chevantón, a man who wears the world on his shoulder, did. He leapt to put an acrobatic (and miss-hit) overhead kick into the net and make it 2-1 before whipping off his shirt in delight and getting booked by jelly-headed killjoy César Muñiz Fernández as the stadium went completely mental. And why not? Sevilla had passed the test - and against a half-decent Madrid too.

Time to scrub out the word "utopia" from Del Nido's insistence that "us winning the league is a utopia" and replace it with "genuine possibility". No sooner had David Albelda returned to the Valencia side than they won for the first time in six weeks, Zaragoza are playing neat, tidy football and scoring lots of goals, and somehow Atlético remain just about within touching distance, but the league will be a three-horse race - four if you include Ruud van Nistelrooy - and after Saturday, Sevilla are most definitely one of them.

Juande Ramos's side are second, and with Barça in Japan for some Fifa nonsense, they can go top if they beat Recreativo on Sunday. They've collected 31 points in 14 games - a total that would've been enough to top the table at this stage in two of the last three seasons - despite already facing Madrid, Barça, Atlético and Valencia. They've won every game at home. And they've been beaten just three times in total: once at the Calderón when Atlético scored two very late goals to win 2-1 after Sevilla had two men sent off and once at the Camp Nou, when they had a perfectly legal goal disallowed and two of Barça's three came from dodgy decisions. Only Espanyol - currently flying - have beaten them properly, 2-1 last week.

Nor is this an early-season fluke, a momentary high before an inevitable collapse. Sevilla are Uefa Cup champions and the best side in La Liga in 2006 (the best side in the world according to the IFHSS), they finished just two points behind second-placed Real Madrid last season missing out on the Champions League because of head-to-head goal difference with Osasuna, and they hammered Barcelona 3-0 in the European Super Cup at the start of this season.

Fantastically organised, packed with talented kids, they have built a superb squad and, under the watchful eye of sporting director Ramón Rodríguez Monchi, have been incredibly successful in the transfer market, making over €70m profit on Julio Baptista, Ramos and Reyes alone, while picking up the ridiculously good Dani Alves for a €1m, Julien Escudé for €1.9m, Adriano for €2.1m, and Andrés Palop, Christian Poulsen, and Javi Navarro for free. They have one of Spain's best managers, are tough and competitive and play with a suffocating pace and real width, but are capable of altering their game to suit the circumstances and even winning without playing well. They are, in short, serious contenders for the title. Just ask the septuagenarian German with the white robes, big ring and bible queuing to shake hands with Del Nido in Bar Remember.