Europa League dream likely over after 3-1 home loss

Another match, another disaster in the last five minutes. That’s the way it’s been for Villarreal lately, and today was no different, with a 90th minute goal and another in extra time giving Valencia a 3-1 win.

Villarreal had chances—Neto in the Valencia goal was one of their stars—we outshot Valencia 16-10—but Guedes, especially, flourished late on. Calleja’s substitutions were, I suppose, an attempt to break the deadlock with a Villarreal goal, as Iborra, Caceres, and then Mario came off for Bacca, Morlanes, and Pedraza, but the Mario sub resulted in Quintillá flipping sides to play with Samu Chukwueze ahead of him, which didn’t work well.

Santi Cazorla scored a penalty for our only goal, Guedes got in to knock home a Parejo penalty Andrés had saved, and really if it had ended 1-1 no one would have felt that a terribly unfair result. In fact, for most of the match, Villarreal were the slightly better side. But then, two goals—Wass from Gayá, and Guedes from Cheryshev— ended that.

The result doesn’t help a Yellow Submarine struggling with self-confidence, unfortunately, but all we can do is keep plugging away and hope things change.

In the other quarterfinals, Benfica 4-2 Frankfurt, Arsenal 2-0 Napoli, Sparta 0-1 Chelsea.

Endavant Villarreal.