Barcelona on Sunday finished their season on a high by capturing the Copa del Rey title to add to their La Liga trophy won just the previous weekend.
Jordi Alba scored seven minutes into extra-time and Neymar sealed the victory late on to give Barcelona a 2-0 win over Sevilla for their second straight Copa del Rey title.
After a goalless 90 minutes, Alba found the net with a low left-footed shot into the far corner after a superb long pass into the penalty area by Lionel Messi.
Photo: AFP
Neymar closed the scoring in stoppage-time after another perfect setup by Messi to give Barcelona their 28th Copa.
“It’s a great way to end the season,” Barcelona midfielder Andres Iniesta said. “It was a wonderful season. We continued to add to the club’s history.”
It is the seventh time that Barcelona have won both domestic titles in the same season. For much of the season, Barcelona had hopes of repeating the treble from last year, when they also won the UEFA Champions League, but they were eliminated by Atletico Madrid in the quarter-finals of Europe’s elite tournament.
Photo: AFP
“It was a spectacular end to the season,” Barcelona coach Luis Enrique said. “Not only because of how we won the league, but also because of how we won this final, when we had to play a man down for a long time. The players couldn’t have shown more character.”
Barcelona, who clinched their 24th La Liga title the previous weekend, played with 10 men from the 36th minute after defender Javier Mascherano was sent off with a straight red card for pulling the jersey of Kevin Gameiro to stop the French striker from entering the penalty area with only the goalkeeper to beat.
The Catalan club also lost Luis Suarez with an apparent muscle injury early in the second half.
The Uruguay striker, who cried on the bench after being substituted, had been crucial for Barcelona in the final stages of league campaign, scoring 14 goals in the final five matches.
Sevilla, who won the UEFA Europa League final against Liverpool on Wednesday last week, also played extra-time with 10 men after midfielder Ever Banega was shown a straight red card in second-half stoppage-time for fouling Neymar just outside the penalty area as the Brazilian tried to get into position to score.
Sevilla then lost defender Daniel Carrico to two yellow cards just before Neymar’s goal late in the game at Atletico Madrid’s Estadio Vicente Calderon.
“Despite this loss, we end the season with our heads up,” Sevilla coach Unai Emery said.
Sevilla, trying to win their sixth Copa del Rey and the first since 2009-2010, controlled possession after Barcelona went a man down and were close to scoring several times, with their best chance coming when Banega struck the post with a long-range shot in the 50th minute.
Barcelona relied on counterattacks, but never threatened much until extra-time started with both teams even with 10 men. Their previous best chance had come from a Messi free-kick easily saved by Sevilla goalkeeper Sergio Rico in the 70th minute.
It was the second final between the teams this season, with Barcelona needing extra-time to win the European Super Cup in August last year. The teams exchanged home victories in La Liga.
After a week-long controversy, Barcelona’s Catalan fans were allowed to display pro-independence flags at the stadium. A Madrid court had banned them because of security reasons, prompting public criticism, but the ruling was reversed on Friday last week after an appeal.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier