Real Mallorca celebrate their late equaliser in Seville.

Valjent celebrates his goal against Seville. | Jose Manuel Vidal

Monro BrycePalma25/02/2025 07:43Updated at 09:31
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Real Mallorca gained a golden point in a 1-1 draw against Sevilla in their Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan stadium on Monday night. Mallorca hadn’t won there since 2010 and up until the 67th minute it looked like they wouldn’t be picking up anything to alter that statistic. In a poor first half for the Palma side, we played good football for about five minutes before hanging on until half time, or so we thought! Once again, the on-pitch referee and a VAR decision put Mallorca behind in the 47th minute. The match referee awarded Sevilla a foul that wasn’t a foul and from the resultant free kick, Sevilla’s Kike Salas volleyed in a scrambled opener. The VAR guys completed the fantasy by validating the goal when Mallorca’s Copete was clearly impeded in trying to make a clearance. 1-0 at half time.

Whatever was put into Mallorca’s halftime bocadillos certainly had an affect because they came out with all guns blazing. We were much more involved in the play but once again were guilty of giving the ball away too easily.

In the 67th minute came our game changer, when Robert Navarro came on to replace Japanese winger Asano. Once again, Navarro was our main protagonist and he nearly lobbed in the equaliser a couple of minutes after coming on, but his chipped effort just cleared the bar. He was an ever present danger to the Sevilla defence as he had another effort which came close. In the 76th minute, coach Arrasate brought on Larin (for Muriqi in his 100th game for Mallorca), Antonio Sanchez (for Sergi Darder) and Abdon Prats (for Dani Rodriguez) as Mallorca went all out for the elusive equaliser.

Mallorca hadn’t scored any late goals this season, but in the 92nd minute, Martin Valjent scored his first La Liga goal for Mallorca in four years. Navarro sent over a cross with Sevilla’s Norwegian keeper Nyland spilling the ball, it broke to Valjent (in his 150th appearance for Mallorca), and he picked up the rebound to score from an angle, sending a packed Mallorca Sports Bar into raptures, as the club song “Vamo Mallorca” rang out.

Despite Sevilla’s protestations that their goalkeeper had been impeded, the goal stood, 1-1. Mallorca are now level with Rayo Vallecano and Real Betis on 35 points, although Rayo Vallecano and Betis have better goal differences. We now have what should be a comfortable home game against second-bottom Alaves in Son Moix on Sunday at 18:30.