It was raining hard in Leganés when the 22 players came out onto the pitch, and it didn’t stop until much later, although the sun appeared on the horizon, like a hologram mocking the protagonists and the more than 8,000 brave souls who got wet in the stands. It’s bad luck for a football pitch – not for those made of crops – to have such inopportune rainfall that it slowed down the play of both teams, who during the first half were limited to enduring the downpour and little else. Athletic dominated and at times, Leganés came out in a rush on the counterattack, taking advantage of the visitors’ forward line, but their forwards lacked accuracy, especially in a double chance that Agirrezabala neutralised, and which could have been a triple when the goalkeeper tripped over Núñez while looking for a lobbed ball.
0
Juan Soriano, Matija Nastasic, Jorge Saenz (Renato Tapia, min. 71), Enric Franquesa, Sergio Gonzalez, Valentin Rosier, Roberto Lopez (Munir El Haddadi, min. 79), Seydouba Cissé, Darko Brasanac (Juan Cruz, min. 71), Sebastien Haller (Diego Garcia, min. 79) and Miguel de la Fuente
2
Julen Agirrezabala, Andoni Gorosabel, Unai Núñez, Dani Vivian, Yuri Berchiche, Íñigo Ruíz de Galarreta (Ander Herrera, min. 62), Alex Berenguer, Unai Gómez (Oihan Sancet, min. 56), Mikel Vesga (Beñat Prados, min. 56), Nico Williams (Gorka Guruzeta, min. 45) and Álvaro Djaló (Iñaki Williams Arthuer, min. 55)
Goals
0-1 min. 64: Daniel Vivian. 0-2 min. 74: Williams
Referee Francisco Jose Hernandez Maeso
Miguel De La Fuente (min. 40), Valentin Rosier (min. 62), Renato Tapia (min. 89)
Apart from that, almost nothing happened on the Butarque pitch, which held up well until the rain stopped. The Bilbao side, who were expected to be more aggressive, lacked the edge to penetrate the home defence, with the flanks well sealed off and Rosier always on the lookout for incursions by Nico Williams, who went off to the break injured when, in the penultimate play of the first half, he twisted his ankle in a fight with Haller, who tackled the ball hard and caused the international striker to fall badly.
The youngest of the saga did not appear in the second half, and Guruzeta came on in his place. A few minutes later, Valverde ordered a triple substitution. He brought on Iñaki, Sancet and Prados, usually starters, but who were resting due to the accumulation of games that were coming, and Athletic began to impose its hierarchy. Bilbao pressed harder and Leganés retreated a bit, but although Valverde’s men did not create clear chances, any detail could change the game. There were two, consecutive, that did so. The first, the goal that opened the scoring. After a corner kick and several rebounds, Guruzeta touched the ball to Vivian, who shot, not too hard, but the ball hit Jorge Sáenz, confused Soriano and went in to the goal, to the joy of the huge red-and-white congregation in the stands.
Just a minute later, Leganés took a free kick from the centre of the area, Haller headed past Agirrezabala. It could have been the equaliser, but the flag was raised and the VAR confirmed the offside. Leganés went all out to equalise, and left their defence quite exposed, so Athletic took advantage of this with a long ball to Gorosabel, who came back down the right wing to cross parallel to the area, where Iñaki Williams appeared to shoot past the home goalkeeper.
Leganés had a chance to reduce the gap after a defensive error by Núñez, but Diego’s shot hit the post. Afterwards, the pepineros pushed as hard as they could, which wasn’t much, and Athletic got their second consecutive away win to move into the upper mid-table with ten points.
