I’d had my eye on this game for a while, mainly because it was a mid-week noon kick-off. As someone who can do his work whenever he likes, it seemed an ideal time for a game of football. Less ideal was the arse on of buying a ticket. The Kings Cup fixture was in Yecla, which is around an hour and twenty minute drive from Santa Pola. That’s ok when you only have to do the drive once. but the lack of online sales meant that I had to make an earlier trip to buy a thirty euro ticket in a café.
I rocked up early on matchday, which was just as well as there were large queues to get into a game that had already sold out. I suppose the visit of top-tier Rayo Vallecano was quite a big deal for a fourth-tier side. The four-thousand capacity crowd was sufficient to have vendors out selling half and half commemorative scarves.
With forty minutes to go to kick-off the ground was already packed. I trekked around to the far end and found a space next to some teenagers on the back row who were working their way through large bags of sunflower seeds. It seemed like the whole town had turned out for the bank holiday fixture, although I got the impression that a lot of them were visiting the Estadio Municipal La Constitucion for the first time in years.
Yeclano were in red and blue stripes with Rayo in their classic Peru kit. There were around three hundred away fans who had brought fifty or so flags between them. They waved them throughout the game as they out sang the home support.
The pitch looked a bit ropey with more areas of rough than Rayo will have been used to in La Liga, but with the hoardings and the stands close to the touchlines it made for a good atmosphere.
Yeclano’s main tactic was to simply boot the ball up field and hope to pick up some scraps. It rarely worked though and was invariably quickly returned to keep the pressure on their defence. My understanding was that Rayo had made a few changes and they took some time to gel.
Both sides were limited to long shots in the first half, and they came off at the break with the game goalless.
Extra-time was looming when Rayo broke the deadlock with a tap-in from a ball played square across the box. They scored a second in added time that may have squeezed though the net afterwards. None of the Rayo players celebrated and the home keeper attempted to restart with a goal kick. It was only the screaming remonstrations from the away bench that had the ref eventually pointing to the centre spot.
It was a decent effort from the fourth-tier side, but the Rayo were worth their place in the next round.
Tags: Kings Cup, Rayo Vallecano, Spanish football, Yeclano Desportivo
Trail of the Lion King 
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