Levante 2-0 Sevilla FC: Primera Division Match Report

Levante 2-0 Sevilla FC — a goal in each half and no reply from a visiting side who had already been beaten 3-0 by these opponents earlier in the season. Levante led 1-0 at the break and doubled it after, taking six points from six against Sevilla across the campaign and doing so without conceding either time.

Both clubs were in the relegation argument. Levante were 19th on 29 points from 31 matches with a goal difference of -15; Sevilla were 17th on 34 with -12, five points better off and one place outside the bottom three. Alavés on 33 sat between them. Seven rounds remained, which is enough for five points to be irrelevant and enough for them to be decisive, depending entirely on fixtures like this one.

Sevilla arrived with the more alarming recent record: 2-5 at Barça, 0-2 at home to Valencia, 0-1 at Real Oviedo — a defeat to another side in the bottom three — and a 2-1 over Atleti in their previous match that had briefly suggested a recovery. Levante had won two of five, including 4-2 over Oviedo and 1-0 against Getafe, and had drawn two.

Levante went to 32 points and a goal difference of -13, cutting the deficit to Sevilla from five points to two and moving to within a point of Alavés. For a side who had spent most of the season in the bottom three, taking three points off the team directly in their path is the only mechanism that works, and they had now done it twice against the same opponent.

Sevilla stayed on 34 with the difference falling to -14 — worse than Levante's, which matters in a division where sides finish level on points more often than not. Their margin over the drop zone had shrunk to two with six rounds to go, and their form line read three defeats in their previous five. A club of Sevilla's size arriving at that point in April is the story of their season, and losing to Levante for the second time is the clearest illustration of it.

Our pre-match call was BTTS Yes at 1.75. It lost, and Sevilla's away scoring was the flaw. They had failed to score in two of their previous four and had been beaten 0-1 at Real Oviedo, another bottom-three side, in the same stretch. Levante had also kept a clean sheet in the reverse fixture. We priced the bet off two shaky defences, which was accurate, and forgot that both teams scoring requires two functioning attacks. Levante supplied one. Sevilla, for the second time against them this season, did not. Verdict: lost