“I was sitting on the bench thinking: ‘Bloody hell, I’m enjoying this,’” Munir El Haddadi said, and it would only get better. He had been inside the bus as it moved slowly through the smoke on the short trip to the Sánchez Pizjuán stadium; now he was alongside the pitch, unable to sit still as his Sevilla teammates made their way through Real Betis quite a lot quicker. With the noise rising round them this was a moment to be part of and, sooner than expected, he was sprinting off in the sunshine, laughing as the substitutes he had just left behind ran towards him.
Munir had been on the pitch for only 10 minutes, a first-half substitute replacing Papu Gómez after half an hour. Now the Moroccan had put Sevilla 2-0 up and the place went wild. Better still, with Betis not scoring until Sergio Canales’s superb free-kick in the 94th minute, he had put them on course for a 2-1 victory they would celebrate as if it was something much, much more than a match. Not least because it was.
