Last night, Ante Budimir became the negative protagonist of the match between Osasuna and Valencia, which was played at El Sadar with a victory for the team coached by Baraja (0-1). In the 96th minute, when the game was dying, the Croatian had a penalty that he missed resoundingly, a kind of 'panenka' that Mamardashvili caught without any difficulty.
The 32-year-old player is a specialist from eleven meters, as the three penalties he had taken this season ended inside. However, Budimir, who takes maximum penalties looking at the goalkeeper until the goalkeeper beats to one side, waited for Mamardashvili to dive, but the Georgian held on until the end.
Budimir, seeing that the goalkeeper guessed his intentions, tried to finally modify the shot, but the result was terrible. The Valencia goalkeeper took the ball in one of the worst penalties in Spanish football.
Jagoba Arrasate, Osasuna coach, tried to encourage Budimir at the press conference: "He has asked us for forgiveness several times, he wanted to throw it aside, he wanted to rectify it and it was too late. He has given us so much joy that we cannot say anything to him , we have to encourage him," declared the coach, who leaves his position at the end of this season.
The failure of the Osasuna striker deprived his team of the tie, which maintained the rojillos' chances of accessing Europe. However, this defeat leaves the Pamplona team eight points behind Valencia, which marks the last position that gives access to European competition.
Furthermore, the night got worse for Budimir. Two minutes after the penalty shot, the Croatian ran into Mamardashvili in an aerial struggle. After being admitted all night to the University of Navarra Clinic, Osasuna revealed in a medical report that the forward suffers "a chest trauma with three rib fractures in the right hemithorax."
