Athletic beats Mallorca, wins first Copa del Rey in 40 years
Athletic Bilbao beat Mallorca 4-2 on penalties to end a 40-year wait for its 24th Copa del Rey title on Saturday.
Athletic goalkeeper Julen Agirrezabala saved a penalty by Manuel Morlanes, while Mallorca’s Nemanja Radonjic shot high. Raul García, Iker Muniain, Mikel Vesga, and Alejandro Berenguer — all substitutes — converted their spot kicks past Mallorca goalkeeper Dominik Greif.
Extra time in the final ended 1-1 after Dani Rodríguez gave Mallorca the lead in the 21st minute and Athletic’s Oihan Sancet leveled in the 50th.
Muniain received the trophy from Spanish King Felipe VI before lifting it high for his team and fans to celebrate.
Athletic won its 23rd and last Copa in 1984. Since then it had lost six straight finals, including in 2020 and 2021. To win this one, it had to first beat both Barcelona and Atletico Madrid in the quarter- and semi-finals.
“This is incredible. Our fans have always been behind us and now it is time to enjoy this,” Athletic forward Nico Williams said. “We have been fighting for this for a long time.”
Only Barcelona and its 31 Copas has more than Athletic, which excels at the tournament despite fielding players only from or near Spain’s northern Basque Country region.
NBA great Steve Nash, a minority owner of Mallorca, was at the game, as well as Rafael Nadal, a native of the island of Mallorca. Each club had 20,000 tickets for traveling fans at the packed 57,000-seat La Cartuja Stadium. Some 40,000 more fans, mostly for Athletic, were expected to descend on the southern city without tickets.
Even though Athletic is fifth in the Spanish league and Mallorca down in 15th place, there was little difference between them in the final. Javier Aguirre, Mallorca’s journeyman coach, succeeded in nullifying the more explosive attack of Ernesto Valverde’s Athletic.
Athletic was unable to stop Mallorca from getting three consecutive shots in its area after a corner kick before Rodríguez opened the scoring. The midfielder curled a shot into the corner of the net after Antonio Raíllo controlled a rebound and laid the ball off for his open teammate.
Athletic took time to finally click in attack, and when it did most of the damage was done by Williams. The Spain winger had a goal waived off for offside before he shot into the side netting in first-half injury time. Grief also saved an early shot by Iñigo Galarreta, while Gorka Guruzeta shot wide.
Canada forward Cyle Larin had an opportunity to double Mallorca’s lead seconds after halftime, but Agirrezabala saved his effort on the break.
Williams helped produce Sancet’s equalizer when he recovered the ball and fed a throughball to the midfielder to beat Greif.
But Sancet’s goal did not fluster Mallorca’s defense, which again clamped down after Aguirre refreshed his side with substitutes.
After a long stalemate without any clear chance, Williams had a point-blank shot that grazed Mallorca defender Pablo Maffeo and hit the post.
Vedat Muriqi then had a header parried by Agirrezabala on the other end as the game finally came alive before going to the shootout.
Muriqi and Antonio Sánchez converted their kicks in the shootout for Mallorca.
The final, which is one of the marquee events organized by the Spanish soccer federation, was played with the federation in crisis after Spanish police made seven arrests and raided properties including the federation headquarters in Madrid as part of a corruption and money laundering probe. Those arrests included current federation employees and former federation president Luis Rubiales.
