Spain

La Liga

Saturday 8th February 2020

Kick Off 18.30 Actual 18.31

Real Valladolid C.F. 1 Villarreal C.F. 1, attendance 19,557

15’ 1-0

53’ 1-1

@ Estadio Jose Zorrilla

Avenida del Mundial 82

47014 Valladolid

€40 Admission

No Programme.

The Estadio Jose Zorrilla was opened in 1982 and was used as a venue during the 1982 World Cup Finals, hosting three group matches involving France, Kuwait and Czechoslovakia. The current capacity is 27,846 with plans to increase to 40,000 in the future. From the outside it doesn’t look that big, but when you enter through the turnstiles you realise it is because the first tier of seats are below ground level.

Calling in at the stadium on our way to the afternoon match turned out to be invaluable. We were told that at six o’clock, which would be around the time we would be arriving, the car park queue would be long and slow. Instead, we were advised to use the supermarket car park on the opposite side of the stadium. As it turned out, the SatNav took us in the direction of the main stadium car park. Indeed the queue was bad, but we just followed the lead of the locals and parked on the grass at the side of the road running alongside. It was only a few hundred yards walk to the stadium from here and we headed straight to the ticket office (it was closed when we were here earlier) to find no queue, so tickets were quickly obtained and we were in our seats twenty minutes before kick off. Result!

The match was 14th versus 7th in the league table. Villarreal have been on a reasonable run lately, bar a defeat to second tier club C.D. Mirandes on Wednesday night in the Copa Del Rey, the scheduling of which was the cause of our game tonight being put back a day. Valladolid attacked from the off and it looked like that had taken an early lead, but the goal was chalked off for offside. It only took them fifteen minutes to open the scoring though, when a cross from the right was volleyed in from 15 yards. They missed some good chances, but just couldn’t find the second goal. Villarreal came back into the game during the second half, equalising eight minutes in. Until now we had assumed that the 17 fans in the away section of the stadium was the sum of their support, but it turned out that there were much larger numbers present, judging by the amount of people in our vicinity who celebrated the goal. It took V.A.R. four minutes to finally decide the goal should stand. Does it really need to take that long to check a replay of any incident.

Both teams went for a winning goal, rather than settle for a draw. It was end to end stuff, but littered with yellow cards as the game became stretched. The atmosphere was good and the place must be absolutely rocking when full. The stadium looked very impressive from the inside too, perhaps helped by the seats being in the purple and white club colours, which is a little bit different to the usual red, blue, black etc.