{"id":231380,"date":"2026-03-03T22:47:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/03\/barcelona-comes-close-to-a-miracle-but-atltico-will-play-in-the-copa-del-rey-final\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T22:47:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:47:55","slug":"barcelona-comes-close-to-a-miracle-but-atltico-will-play-in-the-copa-del-rey-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/03\/barcelona-comes-close-to-a-miracle-but-atltico-will-play-in-the-copa-del-rey-final\/","title":{"rendered":"Barcelona comes close to a miracle, but Atltico will play in the Copa del Rey final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ue-c-article--first-letter-highlighted\"><strong>Atletico Madrid<\/strong> just barely held on to its first-leg advantage against defending champion <strong>Barcelona <\/strong>in the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marca.com\/en\/soccer\/spanish-copa-del-rey\/barcelona-atletico\/2026\/03\/03\/01_0105_20260303_178_175-live.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Copa del Rey<\/a><\/strong> on Tuesday, advancing to its first Copa final in 13 years despite a 3-0 loss to the Catalan club. Atletico advanced <strong>4-3 on aggregate<\/strong> thanks to its 4-0 win in the first leg last month in Madrid.<\/p>\n<p>Diego Simeone&#8217;s team will play in the final for<strong> the first time since <\/strong>it won its 10th Copa trophy in the <strong>2012-13 season<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The second leg of the other semifinal between <strong>Real Sociedad<\/strong> and Basque Country rival Athletic Bilbao will be on Wednesday. Sociedad won 1-0 at Athletic last month.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"ue-c-article__subheadline\">The final will be in April in Seville<\/h2>\n<p>Barcelona saw itself in a hole after being trounced in the first half of the first leg last month, conceding all<strong> four goals <\/strong>before the break at the Metropolitano stadium.<\/p>\n<p>Barcelona came out strong at home Tuesday, scoring with <strong>Marc Bernal<\/strong> in the 29th minute and <strong>Raphinha <\/strong>converting a<strong> penalty kick<\/strong> in first-half stoppage time. <strong>Bernal <\/strong>added the third in the 72nd, leaving the hosts one goal shy from evening the series.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We knew it was going to be a tough match, it&#8217;s not easy to overcome a 4-0 defeat,&#8221; Raphinha said. &#8220;But I&#8217;m proud of the team. We gave everything we had from the start. We leave disappointed because we wanted to be in the final, and I think we deserved it after the game that we played.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"ue-c-article__subheadline\">Barcelona kept pressing<\/h2>\n<p>Barcelona kept pressing but<strong> Atletico&#8217;s stout defense held on<\/strong>.&#8221;Maybe it wasn&#8217;t our best match, but it was a game of 180 minutes,&#8221; Atletico goalkeeper Juan Musso said. &#8220;They had everything going their way but we suffered when we had to suffer. We knew it wasn&#8217;t going to be easy, but in the end we made it to the final.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Barcelona lost defender <strong>Jules Kound to an injury<\/strong> 13 minutes into the match. He was replaced by <strong>Alejandro Balde<\/strong>, who in the second half asked to be substituted as well. Forward Robert Lewandowski missed the match because of an injury.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marca.com\/en\/football\/barcelona\/2026\/03\/03\/69a76325ca474149758b45cc.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Atletico Madrid just barely held on to its first-leg advantage against defending champion Barcelona in the Copa del Rey on Tuesday, advancing to its first Copa final in 13 years despite a 3-0 loss to the Catalan club. Atletico advanced 4-3 on aggregate thanks to its 4-0 win in the first leg last month in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":231381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6808],"tags":[547,971,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-231380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-barcelona","9":"tag-barcelona-english","10":"tag-soccer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}