BARCELONA – Winning by blow against Navalcarnero (0-6), Granada will host Barcelona in the quarterfinals of the Copa del Rey, a round that was handed over on Friday in Madrid and whose draw in a single match will be played between Tuesday and Thursday future. The duel between the Andalusian club and the Barça one shines as the most remarkable one, completing the picture of the Betis-Athletic Bilbao, Levante-Villarreal and Almería-Sevilla matches.
With Barça, who have surpassed 28 of the last 30 qualifying rounds of the Cup they have played, as the main favorite, the four qualifiers will enter the draw for the semi-final, already in two games and whose first duel will take place. play next week matches played back in the second week of March.
The duel between Granada and Barcelona will be the second of them, and also in Los Cármenes, in less than a month, after on January 9 Koeman’s team won in LaLiga with a conclusive 0-4, in which it was the third defeat of the Andalusians at home. this season after 14 games in September.
Curiously, Granada will be the ninth game Barça have played outside the Camp Nou out of the top ten they have played since 2021.
The precedents in the Spanish Cup between the two date from 1949 and 1959 and have not been seen since. In the quarterfinals of the 1949 edition, the first round, played at the old Los Cármenes stadium, ended in a draw, while in the second round, played at Les Corts, Barça was beaten by an undisputed 5-0, with two doublets. by Marcos Aurelio and Basra. The Barça team would end up being eliminated by Valencia, finally champions, in the semifinals.
The second and last time they met in the Cup was in the 1959 final, the only one played in its history by Granada and which, played at the Santiago Bernabéu, was successfully defeated by Barça to Helenio Herrera, who a few weeks before had already won the League and won 4-1, with a double by Kocsis, Eulogio Martínez and Tejada against the lone goal of Arsenio Iglesias.
EQUALITY
If Barça appears as a favorite against Granada, which last season was eliminated by Athletic Bilbao in the semifinals for the double value of goals from the opposite field, the same happens in the duel in which Almería, the only representative of Division 2, will host Seville.
Eliminated by Mirandés in the fourth round of last season, Sevilla, the last Cup champions in 2010 (when they defeated Atlético at the Camp Nou 2-0), played their last final in 2018, defeated by Barça in the Metropolitan. For Almería it will be the first time I play in the quarterfinals since 2011, when they lost in the semifinals against Barcelona.
More equality is expected in Levante-Villarreal, teams that never reached the final, and in Betis-Athletic Bilbao, protagonists of the historic final in 1977 and which the Andalusian team defeated in the penalty kicks (8-7) after finishing the match with a tie at two.
Athletic, champions of the tournament for the last time in 1984, lost the 2009, 2012 and 2015 finals against Barcelona, while Betis are looking for the first final of 2005, which was the second trophy after winning (2-1) in front of them. Health.