La Liga – Match Review: Malaga C.F versus Valencia C.F
In one of the opening matches of the Spanish football league season, Valencia took on Malaga in their season starting encounter. Both the teams played their first league match of the season at Estadio La Rosaleda, which is Malaga’s recognized home stadium.
Valencia were looking to bounce back after a disappointing summer in which they have parted ways with three of their most important players. The Spanish club sold David Villa to Barcelona before the FIFA 2010 World Cup started; David Silva was sold to Manchester City while Nikola Zigic was bought from Valencia by the Premier League club, Birmingham City.
These transfer deals prompted many experts to declare that Valencia’s squad was not good enough to improve on their third placed league finish last season or even match it to a certain extent. On the other hand Malaga finished at the 17th placed spot in La Liga at the end of the 2009-2010 season and the Spanish club barely escaped relegation in doing so.
The hosts started with Fernandez and Rondon in attack as their manager Jesualdo Ferreira decided on a 4-4-2 formation with four in midfield and four in defence. In the centre of the park, Malaga played with Silva and Fernando, while on the wings Owusu-Abey and Eliseu worked their magic. At the back, Manu, Weligton, Gonzalez and Gamez made up Malaga’s defensive line whilst Arnau played in goal for the Boquerones.
At the same time, Valencia went with a tactical 4-2-3-1 formation. Aduriz played as the lone striker for Unai Emery’s side while Mata, Valencia and Joaquin made on the attacking midfield trio. Banega and Albelda provided cover for the defensive as withdrawn midfielders whereas Miguel, Navarro, Ricardo Costa and Mathieu played in defence for the Los Che’s. César Sanchez played as Valencia’s man in between the goal posts.
Valencia started off as the more governing of the two teams and quickly opened the scoring in the 9th minute of the match through Aduriz’s bullet of a header which went past Arnau in a flash. The assist for the goal went to Joaquin, who had many more bright moments later on in the night. In the 34th minute of the match, Albelda was the referee’s first booking of the encounter and almost inevitably as the Spanish midfielder caught Eliseu with a late tackle on the heels.
Valencia’s trio of Mata and Joaquin totally controlled the midfield through retaining possession and taking on their markers successfully. In the 35th minute of the match, Mata had a brilliant chance after he latched onto Joaquin’s beautiful through ball but the offensive midfielder was unable to finish the chance off which would have put Valencia up by two goals to nil.
In the 37th and 38th minutes of the match, Banega and Navarro were booked by the referee respectively for their offences of a hand ball and a late tackle on Rondon in the Malaga attack. In the 43rd minute of the match, Vicente went into the referee’s book after committing a foolish tackle on Eliseu at the edge of the Valencia penalty area.
Right before the half time whistle blew, Valencia were caught sleeping on defence as Eliseu’s free kick was successfully dispatched away by Seba Fernandez into the back of Cesar Sanchez’s goal. At the half way mark both the teams were deadlocked on one goal each. However, Joaquin came into a form of his own in the second half. At the midway point in the second half, around the 69th minute mark, Joaquin gave Valencia the lead after Ivan Gonzalez deflected the Spanish wingers shot in the back of his own to give up parity with their opponents on the night.
Soon after, Joaquin scored again after being passing in by his team mate Aduriz in the 74th minute of the match. Valencia kept control of the match after that and secured an easy first away win of the season to Malaga. Joaquin was man of the match for the former Spanish champions, who will be looking at their winger to maintain this consistent run of form that he has embarked upon at the start of the new Spanish season.
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