Matías Almeyda gathered his players in the shade at the side of the pitch and told them to “liquidate this” so they did. It was 33 degrees out there, they had been playing 33 minutes and they had scored one against Barcelona, which wasn’t enough. The champions were there to be finished, Sevilla’s manager said. He had shown them how, now it was up to them. There was applause, towels taken from shoulders, bottles handed back, and 179 seconds later it was two. It could have been four already; by the time the clock headed beyond 100 minutes it actually was, the men standing before his bench now swirling their shirts above their heads, eager to be released for one last run, over the turf and towards their teammates.
Towards another time too. “They told me it’s been 10 years,” Sevilla’s new striker Alexis Sánchez said. This weekend, the season’s eighth, the most impressive team in Spain lost for the first time and so did Barcelona. But it wasn’t just that Hansi Flick’s side fell immediately after Elche were defeated at Alavés, La Liga’s last two unbeaten records gone in a single Sunday afternoon; it was how it happened and what it meant. For Barcelona, who were taken apart 4-1, and for Sevilla especially, the Sánchez-Pizjuán reminded of the way things used to be, back when they were good. They hadn’t defeated the Catalan side in a decade and hadn’t defeated anyone there all season. “A load of negative things were broken today,” Almeyda said.
