Spain
La Liga
Saturday 21st February 2025
Kick Off 16.15 Actual 16.17
Real Betis Balompie 1 Rayo Vallecano de Madrid 1, attendance 59,436
17’ 1-0
42’ 1-1
@ Estadio La Cartuja Sevilla
Zona Isla de la Cartuja
41092 Sevilla
€28 Admission + €4.50 Booking Fee, Electronic Ticket
No Programme.
A 12 mile drive, which took 22 minutes, found us at our main game of the weekend, or at least a forty minute walk from the stadium! I’d visited Real Betis at their Estadio Benito Villamarin back in February 2006, seeing a 2-0 win versus Real Sociedad, but they are currently carrying out renovations there and will play home games at the 70,000 capacity Estadio de La Cartuja in the meantime. It was opened in 1999 and built to host the Athletics World Championships of the same year and it was hoped to play host to the Olympic Games too, but was part of a failed bid. It famously hosted the 2003 U.E.F.A. Cup Final between F.C. Porto and Celtic and it’s the largest stadium in Andalusia and the fourth largest in Spain.
There’s no car access anywhere near the stadium on match days, apart from VIP’s etc. hence the long walk, but it’s probably quicker on foot to exit the vicinity afterwards than it would be by car anyway, especially if there’s a big crowd present. From the outside the stadium is really underwhelming. It’s got more a look of an office block or residential building than a sports venue, but is absolutely superb once inside. The running track has now gone and the sight lines are excellent. Well, they certainly were from our seats in the top tier and we were pleased, purely by chance, to have opted for seats in the shaded area of the ground. It must have been sweltering on the far side, looking into the sun, as the temperature was edging towards the mid twenties! Tickets were easily booked online, although rather oddly, do not appear digitally until under 48 hours prior to kick off, which was a bit worrying, although it all turned out okay in the end.
It was 5th versus 17th in the league table and looked a good bet for Betis to pick up a valuable three points in their push to finish in a Champions League place, but lowly Vallecano deservedly held out for a draw. It might have been different had Betis played like they did in stoppage time, where they threw everything at the visitors, but sadly, that wasn’t the case. Betis opened the scoring after seventeen minutes, when Bakambu fired high into the roof of the net, after a cross from the right had been blocked by a defender, but fell perfectly for the shot. Isi Palazon grabbed the equaliser three minutes before halftime, side footing in at the far post from a cross from the right. It was met with a deathly silence, despite there being a few hundred away fans in the top tier behind the far goal. Having drawn level, they nearly took the lead in stoppage time, but hit the post with a free kick. Betis did very little for the remainder of the game, until we entered a ridiculous 14 minutes of added time, caused mainly by two lengthy VAR incidents, neither of which resulted in anything. They missed a point blank effort from six yards, which was maybe as much down to good goalkeeping as a bad miss and they did actually get the ball in the net after 100 minutes had been played, but it was ruled out for offside. The game finally finished at 18.17, exactly two hours after it had started. Luckily for us, game three was under four miles away….once we’d made the long hike back to the car.
