The Seville He achieved an important victory (2-1) in his fight to move away from the relegation places and they did it in a ‘six-point’ game against a direct rival like Almería, who arrived at the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán stadium equal to the local team and who now it remains poorly placed among the large group of teams that fight to maintain the category.
A goal from left-back Sergio Akieme before the second minute of the game was over put the score at 0-1 in favor of Almeriabut the Argentine Lucas Ocampos, already in the prolongation of the first half and from a penalty, made it 1-1, while it was another Argentine, Erik Lamela, who managed the comeback in the final stretch of the second half.
In the absence of fourteen days for the championship to conclude, the appointment in Seville presented two teams equal with twenty-five points and both in relegation places, after Valencia overtook them in the table with Saturday’s 1-0 victory at the Mestalla stadium against Osasuna.
That result and others of the day They forced Sevilla and Almería to add three if they did not want to end the week in those relegation positionssince the tie was not worth it to get out of those last places in a classification in which Elche is off the hook.
the sevillistas, with the good taste of having beaten Turkish Fenerbahçe 2-0 on Thursday in the first leg of the Europa League round of 16they still had the painful 6-1 conceded in the Atlético de Madrid field very recent, but Almería, with very low numbers as a visitor, also faced this clash with the disappointment of 0-2 last day against Villarreal .
There were novelties in the two line-ups, as the French center-back Loïc Badé returned to the team of Argentine Jorge Sampaoli, after overcoming an injury that occurred in the middle of last February, and in that of Joan Francesc Ferrer ‘Rubi’ Midfielder Arnau Puigmal was the starter for the first time this season.
Everything that had been planned by both coaches was upset before the second minute of play was over, Because ex-Sevillista Alejandro Pozo started the game as a winger on the right, he took a great cross from the baseline so that Akieme, who arrived very alone, finished off hard and low, to make it 0-1.
After the goal came a few minutes of lack of control, since Akieme himself complained of an injury and a teammate of his, the Malian striker El Bilal Touré, also, to the point that the two were substituted in the twelfth minute.
The two forced changes did not seem to be too noticeable in the visiting team, which, with the score in favor, did not lose their defensive positions on the field and also did not give up going out on occasion to return to surprise a rival who wanted to turn to restore balance to the result.
In this fight, the locals saw in the course of the minutes that they did not have enough resources to overcome the wall set up by the visitorswith which the precipitation and despair of Sevilla always counted in favor of the interests of Almería.
The incidents They did not finish in the first part and before the break the one who could not continue was the goalkeeper of the Seville team, the Moroccan Yassine Bono, who in a start exceeded half an hour came off badly and even had to leave the field on a stretcher and with a neck brace.
With the Serbian goalkeeper Marko Dmitrovic already on the field, Sevilla increased their control over the goal defended by Fernando Martínez and, in the first minute of extension of the six given by the referee, Pozo gave left-back Alex Telles a penalty that Ocampos was in charge of transforming so that the second half began with a new tie.
In the resumption it was seen that Almería wanted to propose something more and a failure in control of the ball by Joan Jordán could soon find the secondbut the Colombian striker Luis Suárez could not solve it alone against the goal Dmitrovic, a throw prior to the fourth injury of the match, now that of the French center-back from Sevilla Tanguy Nianzou, who had to give way to Bryan Gil and that the locals had to rebuild the defense.
The game turned into a round trip, with Sevilla attacking with everything in search of their second goal and an Almería that wanted to take advantage of it to find the spaces with which to surprise again, as it could have done if Badé had not prevented it under the sticks and already with Dmitrovic beaten.
The one who did not forgive was Lamela very shortly after and practically released on the field when he replaced his compatriot Ocampos ten minutes before, with which the last quarter of an hour of regulation time was entered with a local victory by 2-1.
From there until the end, the locals did not know how to define to score the third and this gave Almería options to desperately look for 2-2, although they never had the clarity of ideas to achieve it.
