BARCELONA – Barcelona-Sevilla and Athletic Bilbao-Llevant will be the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, which will already be played in a double match and will be played in the first leg next week, awaiting the resolution in the first week of March of the two eliminatory ones to play the end, in the Stage of the Carthusian monastery of Seville, the 17 of April.
If for Levante this is the first semifinal that comes since 1935, when after eliminating Barça in the quarterfinals they lost to Sabadell, the other three participants have been regular protagonists of the last rounds, even finals, of the competition. Barça, who are playing their tenth semi-final in the last eleven years, won the title consecutively between 2015 and 2019; Sevilla were champions in 2007 and 2010, losing the finals of 2016 and 2018 against Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao, which has pending the dispute of the final of 2020 against Real Sociedad (will be played on April 3 ), was runner-up in 2009, 2012 and 2015, also being defeated by the Barça team on three occasions.
The Levant, however, continues to claim the 1937 Cup, played in the midst of the Civil War on the Republican side and after the fight was not officially admitted by the Spanish Football Federation. On July 18 of that year, the frog team won 1-0 at Valencia at the Sarrià stadium in Barcelona.
Barça and Sevilla have faced each other in a total of 28 Cup matches, with 19 victories for Barça and 6 for the Andalusians. They played the two referred finals and their first confrontation goes back to the semifinals of 1919, with triumph of the Catalan equipment (4-3 in Barcelona and 0-3 in Seville) that would end up losing the end (5-2) against the Arenas de Guecho. His last face-off was in the quarter-finals of the 2018-19 season, in a double game and also favorably sentenced to Barça, who after losing 2-0 to Sánchez Pizjuán thrashed 6-1 at the Camp Nou .
In qualifiers they crossed in 13 occasions, with nine classifications of the Barça by four of Seville, the last one of them in 2010 and emphasizing the eighth of end of 1946, when in the first party the Andalusian set infringed the biggest thrashing conceded by Barcelona in the tournament (8-0) and going to the semifinals after losing 1-0 to Les Corts.
Athletic and Levante, meanwhile, only crossed paths in the round of 16 of the 1946-1947 season. In the first leg played in San Mamés they beat the Lions 6-2, who went round losing 4-2 in the return leg.