Espanyol rows and rows and the yacht barely moves forward. After coming back from a very delicate match against Eibar with two goals from Puado, suddenly what seemed like a magical night turned into a huge fiasco. A visiting goal in the 97th minute of the match, also scored into an own goal by Puado, left the parakeets with no room for maneuver, who lost two points when they were already claiming victory and the possibility of returning to direct promotion positions.
Espanyol lives trapped in a football labyrinth between what it wants to build and what its capacity allows it to achieve. In this context, a pragmatic team arrived at Cornellà on both sides of the field. Eibar had won seven of its last eight games because it does not speculate. He knows what he wants and how to get it. It only took him five minutes to figure out that the space between Víctor Ruiz, starting for the first time, and Brian Olivan was the ideal place to attack. Aketxe, the best of the Basques, sent the ball there and Jon Bautista did the rest. He sat Ruiz down with a cut and shot at Pacheco.
Luis García's lineup was completely conditioned by the substitution of Óscar Gil (a mistake of his caused the first goal for the locals in El Molinón). The coach preferred to place a center back like Sergi Gómez on the side rather than give the Elche native another chance.
After the visiting goal, the nerves returned to the team and the fans. Receiving it again on the first occasion left everyone very touched. It took Espanyol a while to recover, unable to generate danger for many minutes. In fact, it was Eibar that scored the second, but the VAR appeared to annul it for offside when shouts of “out, out” could already be heard in the stands.
And the miracle came. For the first time in the entire game the team combined inside quickly, the ball reached Pere Milla, who scrambled and found Jofre on the right. He went deep to the baseline and the pass from him behind him was finished off furiously into the net by Puado.
After the break, the dynamics of the match did not favor Espanyol. But Braithwaite appeared with an outstanding play to work the second miracle of the night. The Dane outran Berrocal with a subtle touch into space and in one-on-one with Zidane he was skilled in causing the penalty. This time it was Puado who took responsibility for the goal and the youth player did not fail, to turn the game around and give hope to the stands.
Eibar then turned to Pacheco's goal with more faith than football. Until in the last play of the game Espanyol suffered another blow. One more in a season that was supposed to be one to enjoy.
