Instant Europa League Reaction: Villarreal win a crazy game over Sivasspor led by Take Kubo and Paco Alcacer

What an absurd football match. Honestly, in the first 20 minutes, I thought we were gonna win 5-0. Sivasspor does not have a ton of quality, but they do have confidence in spades, and they battled back and took advantage of us in quick transition and in the air.

Take Kubo was absolutely immense. Cleanup duty on his first goal, then an open play and dead ball assist. Against this level of competition he looked every bit the player we were excited about in the summer. Bacca took his goal well but really should have done better with his penalty (though the keeper was early off his line).

Juan Foyth got a goal on an imperious header to (temporarily) give us the lead in the second half, also picked up a wonderful assist in this match, was really good on the ball. I’m very excited about him based on this performance.

Francis Coquelin was just abysmal this match. Complete passenger. Way out of position, didn’t even try to defend in the first half. First notable thing he did was get a yellow.

Ruben looked rusty, Trigueros was an awkward fit in the system we started in. I loved Baena in attack on the left hand side today. Jaume Costa was pretty bad.

Subs

Iborra gave us much needed defense in midfield, Moi was fine but more or less a like for like replacement to Manu and gave similar things. Congrats to Yeremy for getting his debut tonight. Pedraza was a great improvement over Costa

Paco

Paco gets his own section. Paco comes on and scores a REALLY fast brace to put this side away, showing off the ELITE finishing skills that make him so special. In a wild, crazy, ridiculous game, he was the hero tonight. Endavant Paco!

A win is a win.

Very sloppy defensively, but we’ll take the three points. Cadiz on Sunday, a match that we should (and really need) to win. A really, really, exciting (almost too exciting) start to our Europa League campaign.