Sevilla FC won the Europa League on Wednesday evening. José Luis Mendilibar’s club was too strong for AS Roma in the Hungarian capital Budapest after penalties. With seven victories in the Europa League (and predecessor UEFA Cup), the Spanish team is the record holder.
Reputational damage was a certainty beforehand. On the one hand with Sevilla, which is known as the supreme ruler of the Europa League. No club has won Europe’s second club competition more times than the Spaniards, including four times in the past six years. On the side of AS Roma, with the Portuguese José Mourinho, a trainer is at the helm who does not lose any European finals. He led five and won them all, the previous one just over a year ago against Feyenoord in the Conference League (1-0).
In the 34th minute, AS Roma took the lead through Paulo Dybala (29), who was still in doubt before the game due to an injury. The agile Argentine attacker was this year welcomed as a god in Rome, in front of thousands of frenzied fans. In the quarterfinals against Feyenoord, he lived up to his star status by making the 2-1 in a beautiful way just before time, which dragged Roma to extra time, in which the team from Rotterdam was eventually put aside (4-1).
Defensive game
The match was not high after the opening goal, as finals in which the defensive Mourinho participates never really are. Fortunately, Sevilla equalized in the second half. Sevilla veteran Jesús Navas (37) — he has already won the Europa League with Sevilla three times — gave up and defender Gianluca Mancini (27) worked the ball into his own goal via his knee. After that, Roma pressed again, got a chance, but sometimes Sevilla also came dangerously in the opponent’s half.
Sevilla seemed to be pulling the match when a penalty was announced after a foul on Lucas Ocampos (28), who played only 114 minutes for Ajax earlier this season as a rental player, but after consultation with the VAR, AS Roma was shocked free.
Extension
In the final phase of regular time, Sevilla turned out to be the stronger team, but the Spaniards also failed to score, so it came down to extra time: for the third year in a row at the final of the Europa League. However, it turned out that both teams were through it. During extra time, the game was almost continuously stopped. The second half of extra time therefore had no less than twelve minutes of injury time.
In the decisive penalty series, the team from Spain turned out to be the better one by shooting all four penalty kicks. At Roma, Mancini, the man who scored the own goal, and Roger Ibañez both missed their penalties, after which Argentina’s Gonzalo Montiel scored the winning penalty for Sevilla.