BARCELONA – Barcelona-Sevilla and Athletic Bilbao-Levante will be the Copa del Rey semifinals, which will already be played in a double game and the first round will take place next week, pending the resolution of both qualifying rounds in the first week of March for the final it will be played at the Estadio de la Cartuja in Seville, on April 17.
If for Levante this is the first semifinal they have reached since 1935, when after the elimination of Barça in the quarterfinals they fell against Sabadell, the other three participants were regular protagonists of the last rounds, even the final ones, of the competition. Barça, who have been playing in the semi-finals for the last eleven years, have won the consecutive title between 2015 and 2019; Sevilla were champions in 2007 and 2010, losing the 2016 and 2018 finals to Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao, which is awaiting the 2020 final match against Real Sociedad (to be played on April 3), was runner-up in 2009, 2012 and 2015 , being also defeated by the Barça team three times.
However, Levante continues to claim the 1937 Cup, played in the midst of civil war on the Republican side and which after the competition was not officially admitted by the Spanish Football Federation. On July 18 of that year, the Granota team defeated Valencia 1-0 at the Sarrià stadium in Barcelona.
Barça and Sevilla met in total in 28 Cup matches, with 19 victories in Barça and 6 for the Andalusians. They played the two mentioned finals and their first confrontation dates from the semifinals of 1919, with the triumph of the Catalan team (4-3 in Barcelona and 0-3 in Sevilla) which would end up losing the final (5-2) against Arenas de Guecho. Their last face-off was in the quarter-finals of the 2018-19 season, in a double game and also condemned favorably to Barça, who after losing 2-0 to Sánchez Pizjuán threw 6-1 to New field.
In the qualifying rounds they met on 13 occasions, with nine classifications for Barça and four for Sevilla, the last of them in 2010 and the highlight of the eighth in 1946, when in the first round the Andalusian team violated the biggest victory granted by Barcelona in the tournament (8-0) and going to the semifinals after losing 1-0 to Les Corts.
Meanwhile, Athletic and Levante met only in the round of 16 of the 1946-47 season. In the first round played in San Mamés, the Lions defeated 6-2, who passed the round losing 4-2 in the second round.