Deportivovs
ValenciaValencia came to Riazor with more of the ball, more passes, and better accuracy. They left with a loss. That's the short version. The longer one involves a defender putting through his own net twice and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang reminding everyone he still knows where the goal is.
The opening 30 minutes were genuinely strange. César Tárrega, Valencia's own man, broke the deadlock in the 13th minute — into his own net — and Deportivo barely had time to celebrate before Mario Soriano Carreno set up Aubameyang to make it 2-0 four minutes later. Riazor was buzzing. Then Umar Sadiq pulled one back for Valencia in the 26th, and suddenly the whole thing felt wide open again.
It wasn't, as it turned out.
The moment that ended the argument
Valencia carried that momentum into the second half and spent the hour mark pressing for an equalizer. Then, on 59 minutes, Mouctar Diakhaby did what Tárrega had done in the first half — put the ball into his own goal. Qué tarde tan cruel for the Valencia defender, who then picked up a yellow card five minutes later, perhaps still rattled. That second own goal, 3-1, was the match done as a contest.
Deportivo finished with 44.5% possession and only 11 shots, four on target. Valencia had 55.5% of the ball, 12 shots, four on target, and a pass accuracy of 90%. The numbers say Valencia were the better team on paper. The scoreboard disagreed, and the scoreboard is the one that counts.
Our pre-match read called this too close to split — and it was, right up until Deportivo made it anything but.
The only real drama after the 59th minute came in stoppage time, when Deportivo's Adrià Altimira collected a yellow and then an immediate red, finishing the night a man down. It won't matter for the result, but it's the kind of clumsy ending that could matter in a future fixture.
Valencia will feel hard done by. Two own goals and a red card in added time — en qué tarde se encontraron — is not the kind of defeat you can point to and say the better team won. They had the ball, they had the shots, and they had the game plan. What they didn't have was luck, and in a match this tight, luck writes the story.
Deportivo, meanwhile, move on with three points and a form line that now reads WDDLW — resilient enough, and at home, dangerous. Aubameyang's goal was the only one that came from open play with any real intent behind it, which is a question worth asking before their next outing. Can they manufacture chances, or do they need Valencia's defenders to do it for them?
For now, they won't care. Three points is three points.
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