Luis García Team Valencia 2-2 Draw Final Day off The Mestalla

A 2-2 draw at Valencia ensured Luis García’s team will not be among several sides fighting for survival on the final day, When the end came, Espanyol’s captain pulled his shirt over his face and sobbed, a member of staff taking him gently by the arm and guiding him off the Mestalla pitch and out of the first division. 

“We didn’t deserve it to end like this,” Sergi Darder had said, which was just about all he had been able to say; three men needed to compose him and carry him towards the camera where, exposed, his voice cracked and his eyes stung. That and “sorry”, plus a promise to be back he knew was as hard to hear as to express. Then he raised an apologetic hand and, head covered, departed.

“When we were closest, it was gone: it was cruel,” said his coach, Luis García. In the 93rd minute of the 37th week of the longest and tightest relegation battle anyone had seen, when someone’s grip finally failed, survival torn from their fingers, it was theirs. “We had fought so hard to have our final at our home with our people,” Darder said, but Espanyol will not be in the fight for survival next Sunday. Six other teams, separated by two points, will: Valladolid, Celta Vigo, Almería, Valencia, Cádiz and Getafe, each with their fate in their hands and hearts in their mouths.

There were so nearly seven of them, more than a third of the division. If Espanyol have been the most likely to go for a long time, survival always just out of reach, this has been Spain’s Sarlacc pit, a place where no one, except Sevilla, was able to pull clear; where no one let go, either, except Elche, who disappeared weeks ago. Every time it seemed done, it wasn’t, every combination compressing it more, like it was scripted. Only who would script this, a story where in the past seven days alone, Valladolid beat Barcelona, Valencia beat Madrid, Getafe won at Betis, and Espanyol came from 3-0 down to draw with Atlético? Where someone could go down with more than 40 points?

With each passing week, it seemed to get tighter. In this, the penultimate week, where six endangered clubs faced each other, and everyone played simultaneously, tension tearing at all of them, it got absurd.

On 89min 42sec in the pouring rain at the Coliseum Alfonso Pérez, Jaime Mata scored his first goal in 18 months, with what he called the worst shot of his life, to give Getafe, who had trailed within two minutes, a 2-1 win over Osasuna. Down among the confetti in Cádiz, the Carranza looking every bit the Bombonera, the home side were 1-0 up, Gonzalo Escalante brilliantly setting up Rubén Sobrino.

Although injured, Iago Aspas was on – “practically in a wheelchair” as he put it – Celta had not found an equaliser, Conan Ledesma making one barbaric save. Over the other side of Andalucía, Almería were dominating Valladolid – 23 shots they had rattled off – but still couldn’t make a breakthrough.

Meanwhile, at Mestalla, in a match between two relegation-threatened clubs who had more first division seasons under their belts than anyone except ever-presents Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao, Espanyol had come from a goal down to lead Valencia 2-1. All of which meant that, as everyone went into added time, there were seven teams within three points, all living to fight another day: Espanyol on 38, Valladolid on 39, Celta, Almería and Valencia on 40, Getafe and Cádiz on 41.

If Espanyol were still the lowest of them, they would play Almería at home on the final day while Getafe and Valladolid faced each other: somehow they had put themselves in a position where a victory would see them safe. They had trailed to a Diego López goal – for all the talk of experience, it is the kids who are saving Valencia – and had been taken apart in the first half. When César Montes headed in their equaliser on 40 minutes, it was their first attempt, while Valencia were on 10. But Martin Braithwaite made it 2-1 five minutes into the second half and everything had changed.

Another effort from Montes on 76 minutes, which would surely have secured victory for Espanyol, was ruled out on the infuriatingly familiar grounds that the goalkeeper couldn’t catch a cross and the attacker had committed the crime of daring to jump. On the touchline, Rubén Baraja, the Valencia coach, was frantically trying to get his team going. The PA announcer was trying too, but, exhausted and prisoners of their fear, they no longer carried a threat. “There are nerves, a lack of confidence, anxiety. They’re people,” Baraja said.

Every pass was going astray, every cross sailing harmlessly into the arms of Fernando Pacheco. As for Espanyol, they kept the ball and, when they did break, they ran free.

Which is when it happened. On 92min 14sec Braithwaite dashed through the middle, an opportunity to run down the clock as much as run at goal. As he passed José Luis Gayà, the Dane tumbled. For a moment, it felt like there was a pause, like this was it. But there was no whistle.

Gayà recovered, won the ball back and slotted it through. A moment’s inertia, a huge hole and suddenly inside the Espanyol area, running on to the ball with no one anywhere near him, there was Samuel Lino. Steadying himself, he lashed high into the net.

Then he slipped to his knees, like his legs gave way, and cried. “I got emotional,” he said. By the bench, Baraja was going wild, the stampede of players thundering past him on both sides, substitutes and staff setting off for the pitch.

It had happened again. In the past month goals in minutes 93, 93 and 89 have kept them alive. This was definitive, they thought. No wonder Mestalla lost its collective mind.