BARCELONA – Winner by a landslide against Navalcarnero (0-6), Granada will host Barcelona in the quarterfinals of the Copa del Rey, a round that was drawn this Friday in Madrid and the tie, in a single match, will be played between Tuesday and Thursday next week. The duel between the Andalusian club and Barça shines as the highlight, completing the picture of the Betis-Athletic Bilbao, Levante-Vila-real and Almeria-Sevilla matches.
With Barça, who have won 28 of the last 30 Cup qualifiers they have played, as the main favorite, the four qualifiers will enter the draw for the semi-finals, already in a double match and the first duel will be played next week, return matches the second week of March.
The duel between Granada and Barcelona will be the second between the two, and also in Los Cármenes, in less than a month, after on January 9 Koeman’s team won in Laliga by a conclusive 0-4, in which it was the Andalusians’ third home defeat this season after 14 games since September.
Interestingly, Granada will be the ninth game Barça have played away from the Camp Nou in the first ten they have played since it began in 2021.
The precedents in the Spanish Cup between the two date back to 1949 and 1959, having not seen their faces again since. In the quarterfinals of the 1949 edition, the first leg, played at the old stadium of Los Cármenes, ended in a draw, while in the return leg, played in Les Corts, Barça scored by an indisputable 5 -0, with two doubles by Marc Aureli and Basra. The Barça team would end up being eliminated by Valencia, the 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 entire history by Granada and which, played at the Santiago Bernabéu, was won with credit by Helenio Herrera’s Barça, that weeks before had already won the League and that prevailed by 4-1, with double of Kocsis, Eulogio Martinez and Tejada before the solitary goal of Arsenio Iglesias.
EQUALITY
If Barça appears as the favorite over Granada, who were eliminated by Athletic Bilbao last season in the semi-finals due to the double value of the goals in the opposing field, the same happens in the duel in which Almeria, the only representative of 2ª Division, will receive in Seville.
Eliminated by Mirandés in the fourth round of last season, Sevilla, champions for the last time in the Cup in 2010 (when they beat Atlético at the Camp Nou 2-0), played their last final in 2018, defeated by Barça in the Metropolitan. For Almeria it will be the first time I played in the quarterfinals since 2011, when it fell in the semifinals against Barcelona.
More equality is presumed in the East-Villarreal, equipment that never got to play the end, and in the Betis-Athletic of Bilbao, protagonists of the historical end of 1977 and that overcame the Andalusian equipment to the turn of penalties (8-7) after the match ended in a draw.
Athletic, last champions of the tournament in 1984, lost the finals of 2009, 2012 and 2015 to Barcelona while Betis is looking for its first final since 2005, which meant its second trophy after beating (2-1) Osasuna.