BARCELONA – Barcelona-Sevilla and Athletic Bilbao-Levante will be the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, which will already be played in doubles and will play the first leg next week, pending the resolution of both qualifying rounds in the first week of March for The final will be played on April 17 at the Estadio de la Cartuja in Seville.
If this is Levante’s first semifinal they’ve reached since 1935, when they fell against Sabadell in the quarter-finals after knocking out Barça, the other three participants were regular protagonists of the final rounds, even the last, of the competition. Barça, which plays its tenth semifinal in the past eleven years, won the title consecutively between 2015 and 2019; Sevilla were champions in 2007 and 2010, losing the 2016 and 2018 finals to Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao, which is pending the 2020 final dispute against Real Sociedad (to be played on April 3), it was second in 2009 , 2012 and 2015, which were also beaten three times by the Barça team.
However, Levante continues to claim the 1937 cup, which was contested on the Republican side during the Civil War and was not officially admitted by the Spanish Football Association after the match. On July 18 of that year, the Granota team defeated Valencia 1-0 at the Sarrià stadium in Barcelona.
Barça and Sevilla played a total of 28 cup matches, with 19 Barça wins and 6 for the Andalusians. They played the two mentioned finals and their first confrontation dates back to the semifinals of 1919, with the triumph of the Catalan team (4-3 in Barcelona and 0-3 in Seville) ultimately losing the final (5-2) against Arenas de Guecho. Their last face-to-face was in the quarter-finals of the 2018/19 season, in a double play and also favorably condemned to Barça, who pitched 6-1 at Camp Nou after a 2-0 defeat at Sánchez Pizjuán.
In the qualifying rounds they met 13 times, with nine standings for Barça and four for Sevilla, the last in 2010 and culminating in the round of 16 in 1946, when the Andalusian team breached Barcelona’s biggest victory in the first leg in the tournament (8-0) and advance to the semi-finals after a 1-0 defeat at Les Corts.
Athletic and Levante, meanwhile, only met in the eighth finals of the 1946-47 season. In the first leg in San Mamés, the lions beat 6-2, who passed the round with a 4-2 loss in the second leg.