Batalla’s double penalty save allows Rayo Vallecano to dream of Europe - chof 360 news

The ball was in play for just four seconds during the last 11 minutes of another Madrid derby but that was enough, every emotion packed into eight touches and 100 freeze-frames on a cold Friday night across the motorways to the south of the city. The difference between triumph and disaster was a fine line painted white and a goalkeeper in green. Leganés were suddenly, unexpectedly lifted up and handed a lifeline, only to be knocked down, lifted up, knocked down, lifted up and knocked down again. Rayo Vallecano, meanwhile, were taken on the same journey in the other direction, eventually left standing, celebrating something they couldn’t imagine before and wouldn’t imagine now.

“Very mad,” the Rayo striker Sergio Camello called it. All of it: the fact they, the club who have only played European football once and thanks to fair play, had just won 1-0 and were sixth and the way they got there, how close they had been to having it taken away again, everything unfolding so fast feelings couldn’t catch up. “I can still feel the fright,” the manager Iñigo Pérez said. “You play football for years, watch it, even start coaching, and think you’ve seen it all. But this is something that’s never happened to me.” What had happened shouldn’t have, he said, an epic end his team could have avoided, but it was better this way, Augusto Batalla performing a miraculous rescue by saving a last-second penalty.

Twice.

In truth, the derby hadn’t been great until then. But now it was brilliant, VAR helping deliver the drama, a battle saved for the final scene. Rayo were a goal and a man up at Butarque after the Leganés captain Sergio González had been sent off and Pathé Ciss had found a way through to score with 12 minutes left, when Camello tried to lob Rayo’s 19th shot over Marko Dmitrovic. Had he scored, it would have been over, but he didn’t. Nor, though, did it seem to matter; this was done. The board had said five minutes more and the clock showed 92.36 – Leganés had 10 men and had only managed four shots, none on target.

There wasn’t time for anything but there was time for everything. One last ball was sent forward and, on 93.07, Darko Brasanac went down inside Rayo’s penalty area. At first it looked like a dive and the referee Alejandro Quintero González didn’t give anything. Rayo broke again, Adri Embarba having another shot blocked. But on 93.37, the referee stopped play and put his finger in his ear. The ball had gone out; the game would still be going 11 minutes and four seconds later. Rayo’s goal was about to be in the line of fire for the first time.

From the VAR room at Las Rozas, 20km round the M40, they had seen Florian Lejeune’s boot connect with Brasanac and, on 94.04, Quintero González was called to have a look, players surrounding him and pointing as he stood staring at the screen. When at last the referee had seen what they saw, he pointed to the spot. This was it, the opportunity for Leganés to get something: one opportunity, one shot that turned out to be two. Two men 12 metres apart, smiling at each other, laughing, offering a few words, trying not to crack up on the surface, trying not to crack beneath it. Miguel de la Fuente v Batalla.

De la Fuente spat, breathed in, chest heaving, took two big steps to his left, ran up and hit it, a little to Batalla’s right but central. The goalkeeper saved it, the ball coming off his palm, and bouncing up. De la Fuente jumped, headed it down and Valentin Rosier bundled over the line: 1-1. It was 97.20, almost 11pm, and Leganés had done it, “Freed From Desire” blaring over the loudspeaker, limbs everywhere.

Batalla, though, had seen someone encroach in the penalty area – “I wasn’t sure but on the bench they confirmed it,” he said – and was encouraging the referee to see it too, everything paused again. In Las Rozas, they were looking at another replay. A minute passed, then another. And then the referee was back at the screen, waving players away, his linesman playing bodyguard. “I tried to stay serene and wait for his judgement,” Pérez said afterwards, “but…”

Atlético Madrid 2-0 Mallorca, Barcelona 1-0 Alavés, Espanyol 1-0 Real Madrid, Getafe 0-0 Sevilla, Leganés 0-1 Rayo Vallecano, Osasuna 2-1 Real Sociedad, Real Betis, Athletic Bilbao, Valencia 2-1 Celta Vigo, Villarreal 5-1 Real Valladolid

Monday Girona v Las Palmas (8pm GMT)

By the time Quintero González stepped away, the derby was in the 103rd minute. He headed towards the north end, briefly stopped, like a man wondering if he had left the oven on, then started again, ‘No, it’s fine,’ and sent them back to do it all again. Óscar Valentín, Pep Chavarría and Iván Balliu asked for an explanation: there had been two players in the area, the referee told them, one from each team. Batalla hugged De la Fuente, grinning again, enjoying this, or acting like he was. The striker wiped his mouth and went the other way. So did Batalla, saving the shot, the ball falling to almost exactly the place where Rosier had followed up. This time, forewarned, Chavarría was first to it, hoofing it clear, high into the sky.

Leganés had a corner but no time for more. From 93.37 to 104.41, the ball had been moving for four seconds and there had been eight touches: two penalties taken, two penalties saved, one header, one goal that wasn’t, one clearance and a corner, nodded away by Valentín, the whistle already gone. Rayo’s players ran to Batalla, grabbing him by the shirt, embracing him, surrounding him. He wagged his finger, “No, no, no, no, no,” but they weren’t listening, throwing into the air the man who was hero and villain last week and 100% hero now. A headline writer’s gift too: Rayo ‘battle’ for Europe, said Marca, AS and just about everyone else.

Six days earlier, Batalla had made a couple of superb stops as Rayo’s late comeback defeated Girona, but also sparked a confrontation between between the club’s president, Raúl Martín Presa, and a man that Rayo fans actually like: Míchel I of Vallecas, the former player, coach and local boy that went to Girona but still represents his former club better than anyone. Míchel had said the final minutes had been a little bit “ugly” because of the time wasting. He also said he doesn’t blame Rayo’s coach (who admitted he was uncomfortable with the time wasting), alleging instead that the are orders handed down by a president who is a pariah in his own ground. The battle played out publicly and dominated everything for days.

Batalla is a repeat offender, some of what he does sufficiently obvious and ostentatious as to be funny – this is the man to whom Carlo Ancelotti recommended more potassium in his diet, so often did he get “cramp.” But in one thing Presa was right: at the heart of the complaints from opponents is frustration: not just with the silliness, but the saves. And there are a lot of them. No one in primera has a better save percentage than Batalla at 77.21%. In Europe only four men are ahead of him.

It hasn’t always been easy for the goalkeeper who began an unstable, constantly changing career at River Plate and admitted he needed professional help to handle the pressure. “There’s a machismo that doesn’t allow you to show how you are,” he said. “The typical line is: ‘don’t cry’ and the truth is that destroys; it’s not constructive to not be able to express yourself, to not be able to say how you feel. My great victory now is maintaining balance in good moments and bad; what’s important is that you do what you have to do behind the scenes.” Still a River player, despite last playing for them in 2018, Rayo is the seventh club he’s joined on loan, having been relegated with Granada last year.

Avoiding that fate was supposed to be the extent of Rayo’s ambitions this season. Instead, Batalla and his teammates are in the form of their lives. “Our target is survival. We will continue to be prudent until the maths say otherwise. Then I might be a little less prudent, but I will never be imprudent,” Pérez said; he also called Rayo’s position “purely anecdotal”, only it’s not. “Europe is for other teams, it’s not for us,” the coach said but it’s his team, the smallest of all, sitting sixth, among the most dynamic, exciting sides in La Liga, a continuity of the identity that Pérez embraced while assistant to Andoni Iraola. A fortnight ago the captain Valentín dared mention Europe. Last week, two late goals from Randy Nteka – as many in three minutes as he had scored in three years – brought victory over Girona. And now they had their third win in four, extending their unbeaten run to eight, thanks to a penalty saved on 97.19 and again on 104.01, details that can feel like fate falling their way.

As emotions unravelled during a weird and wild ending to the other Madrid derby, anything seemed possible. Asked if they could dream, the Rayo midfielder Isi said: “I’ve been dreaming my whole life, so why not?” After all, they had just been shot at twice, unloaded upon from point-blank range and somehow survived, Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield standing there unscathed, wondering how the hell it had happened. The answer was on the line, where Batalla had smiled like a man who knew. “It went well when it could have gone badly,” Pérez said. “We shouldn’t have to depend on Augusto, but I’m happy that we could.”