Sevilla will receive in the Europa League final the passion of two classics, Rangers and Eintracht | Sports

Sánchez Pizjuán and almost even Seville will be left small in the face of the flood that awaits in the final of the Europa League that will bring together on May 18 two classics longing for triumphs in intercontinental competitions. Rangers and Eintracht enjoyed short-lived glories in them, the Scottish Cup Winners’ Cup champions in 1972; winners in the UEFA Cup, the Germans in 1980. Now they promise a duel marked by the skin-deep sensitivity of irredentist fans and with a triple prize, that of the title, that of direct access to the next Champions League in the hype of the heads of series and the opportunity to play in the Super Cup.

In the old Ibrox Park, emotions were unleashed as it had not been remembered for a long time. Neither the path traveled by the Rangers deserves less. In 2012, four years after being a UEFA Cup finalist, they simply didn’t exist. A disastrous economic management and, in the end, a debt of just over 25 million euros with the treasury led to the disappearance of the historic Glasgow Rangers, founded in 1872 and one of the two emblems of Scottish football. The club was refounded and must have started, like The Rangers, in the fourth division. In 2016 he was back in the top flight and a year ago he won the League with Steven Gerrard at the helm. Everything seemed to flow again, but at Christmas, with thirteen games played and the leading team, Aston Villa put a contract on the table for Gerrard.

The substitute had a past in the club. Gio Van Bronckhorst had made a career there between 1998 and 2001 before giving his best football years at Arsenal and Barcelona. As a coach he was unemployed after giving up a contract at the Chinese Guangzhou. He did not hesitate before the call and with ex-deportivista Roy Makaay in second he is signing an epic that no one could imagine in Ibrox, where it no longer matters that Celtic is one step away from regaining domestic primacy.

Rangers traced back to Leipzig the minimum advantage that the German team had achieved in their fiefdom. He did it in a vibrant first twenty minutes in which he mixed the Dutch school, to attract the rival and find spaces from the combination, and the voracity of football from the Islands of a lifetime. The team overcame the absence of its best attacking men, the Colombian Morelos or the Romanian Hagi, son of the great Gica. Tavernier and Kamara scored two goals in just six minutes amid an electric atmosphere. Leipzig wanted to recover, but only broke out for a short stretch during the second half, just after sacrificing Dani Olmo, who went to the bench in disgust. Nkunku tied the tie after a monumental cross from Angeliño from A Coruña, but in heads or tails, the center back Lundstram took advantage of the rejection of a poisoned cross against the goalkeeper that the goalkeeper Gulácsi did not offer the best possible response. Rangers walled themselves off to resist for ten minutes and open a crack in Leipzig’s project, which is already in dire need of a title. They have the title amendment, with the German Cup final against Freiburg on the 21st.

Eintracht settled their semifinal against West Ham United to give continuity to a continental campaign that has nothing to do with their lukewarmness in the Bundesliga, through which they are in the middle of the table and now have six consecutive games without winning. Europe transforms Eintracht, which three years ago was left with a pending account when a penalty shootout separated it from the final, which Chelsea played and won. The club, which between 1995 and 2014 had barely qualified once to play European competitions, saw an open spigot to fight to swell a flat track record (1 League, 5 Cups and 1 Uefa Cup) that does not correspond to its greatness .

In Seville they will be favorites, even because of their baggage this season, in which they dropped Betis and Barcelona before leaving West Ham behind. They won both games. In the second leg they managed the 1-2 that they brought from London against a rival that was left with ten men, due to Cresswell’s expulsion midway through the first half in a last-man action in which the referee Gil Manzano amended his initial decision after consulting the images. Shortly after, Santos Borré scored and the duel was decided, with no greater English response than an attempt by Zouma that Ndicka took under the sticks shortly before the break. The passing of the minutes blurred David Moyes’ team, expelled for an altercation with a ball boy.

Third European final for Roma

Two classics will also give luster to the epilogue of the Conference League, the new Uefa competition that will have a champion on May 25 in Tirana. Roma and Feyenoord will be in the final. The squad led by Jose Mourinho beat Leicester (1-0) and made a good draw on the English field thanks to a goal from Abraham. It will be the third European final for Roma, who lost the European Cup at home in 1984 and fell in the Uefa Cup to Inter in 1991.

Feyenoord lifted the European Cup, and the Intercontinental Cup, in 1970 and the Uefa Cup in 1974 and 2002, but so far this century they have barely won a League in their country, in 2017, with Van Bronckhorst as coach. The Conference League has put him back in the continental showcase after eliminating Olympique de Marseille, with whom he drew goalless at the Vélodrome to defend his narrow victory in the first leg.

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