La Liga's two Friday matches started at 11pm local time, featured a protest from Rayo Vallecano's fans about the late kickoff time and saw both matches decided with goals in stoppage time. Not a bad day.
La Liga 2013: Almeria and Elche draw, Levante downs Rayo Vallecano
Two matches that didn’t look all that great on paper turned out to be instant classics as both Elche and Levante scored in stoppage time to grab results.
Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno
Here’s a recap of the action.
Almeria 2-2 Elche
Two of the league’s new faces played to a dramatic 2-2 draw on Friday as both team’s gained a point but failed to pick-up their first win of the season.
Almeria took the lead early when Fernando Soriano headed in a Rafita cross to put the home side in front 1-0 in the 11th minute. Elche answered back in the 33rd minute when Almeria’s Sebastian Dubarbier was called for a handball in the box, giving Elche a penalty. Edu Albacar beat Suarez Esteban to pull the visitors even.
Almeria fought right back, retaking the lead minutes before halftime on a penalty of their own. Elche’s Cristian Sapunaru was called for a handball and Verza scored to make it 2-1.
Almeria were forced to defend their lead with only 10-men after Sebastian Dubarbier picked up a second yellow card in the 67th minute. They withstood Elche’s pressure and came within seconds of the victory, but it wasn’t to be.
Richmond Boakye was the hero for Elche, scoring five minutes into stoppage time to grab a point for Los Franjiverdes.
Rayo Vallecano 1-2 Levante
Just went it looked like Levante would waste nearly 30 minutes of playing a man up, Andreas Ivanschitz scored a goal out of nothing in the 93rd minute to hand the Granotes their first win of the season.
Levante went ahead in the 26th minute thanks to some excellent close range play from Ruben Garcia, who deftly slid the ball past Ruben Martinez to make it 1-0. The Granotes held on to that lead until the 78th minute, despite midfielder Lass being shown a straight red for kicking out at Juanfran in the 60th minute.
The equalizer came 12 minutes from full time when Rayo’s Joaquin Larrivey got free in the Levante box and headed home Roberto Trashorras’s ball in to the area.
Three minutes into stoppage time with Levante sitting on the ball, Rayo created a chance on the counter and stole the three points. Jordi Xumetra helped launch the break and found Ivanschitz unmarked in the center of the box for a shot into the bottom right corner.
More in Soccer:
See More:
