Dignity and doom: Levante succumb to inevitable in Bernabéu mauling

Adrián Cordero Vega ended it a second too early and not a moment too soon. The clock said 89.59 when the referee blew but it had been over almost from the start, and not just last night. Levante were a goal down after 12:42 at the Bernabéu; they were down-down as well, no longer able to resist the inevitable, the fate they had fought. “We’ve been been given up for dead many times but keep rising again,” said Alessio Lisci, their third coach this season and the only one to win a game, but this was a resurrection too far. Now they just wanted it finished, nothing left to give. “The players suffered the unspeakable,” their president said when at last it was, relegation confirmed long after it was known.

Six days earlier, Alessio said he “almost had a heart attack” when Gonzalo Melero’s last-minute penalty gave Levante a lifeline with a 2-1 win against Real Sociedad. A fortnight before, José Luis Morales, the captain, had broken down when he missed one of his own that would have equalised against Sevilla, but either side of that they had drawn with Valencia and hammered Granada 4-1. They had also beaten Villarreal 2-0. In six matches since the start of April, they had won three and lost two and those were 3-2s against Sevilla and against Barcelona, via a 92nd-minute Luuk de Jong goal.

All of which meant they arrived at the Bernabéu knowing that if they could beat Real Madrid they might just still survive. After all, their next game would be against Cádiz, an opportunity against the team they had to catch, and their final match was against Rayo Vallecano, left with nothing to play for. They had won twice in three years at the Bernabéu and Madrid were already champions. They would be handed a guard of honour, which might