With Bravo back in goal: Pellegrini’s Betis debut in the Europa League with a win on their visit to Finland

Manuel Pellegrini’s Real Betis emerged victorious from their visit to Finland. Verdiblanco’s cast beat HJK Helsinki 0-2 early in the Europa League group stage .

This duel also marked the debut of Claudio Bravo as a starter in the season. a situation which was postponed to this Thursday due to the late signing of the goalkeeper due to the club’s Financial Fair Play concerns.

The duel started in an unfavorable way for the Engineer’s team, since in 3 minutes ‘he had to deal with the injury of Juanmi Jiménez after he jumped to play a ball and bent his ankle in the fall , lying on the artificial turf of the pitch with clear signs of pain

In fact, he had to go on a stretcher to the locker room. A direct hit, given that he was the only player to repeat the formation of Betis’ last game, against Real Madrid, in the Spanish League .

Gradually, the Spanish team began to dominate the ball and have the main dangerous plays. At minute 23, Miranda had one of the clearest shots to convert, but the goalkeeper was careful to contain the shot.

Bravo’s first intervention came in the 27th minute, keeping the ball after an obligatory shot from Pyry Soiri from the right sector of the attack. .

The pressure from Betis continued in the 35th minute. A game developed by the right side ended with a cross to the head of Willian José who ended up deflecting his shot. And after the game resumed, William Carvalho forced a good stretch on the keeper.

When it looked like the score remained level for the second half, a call came from VAR to review a possible penalty in favor of the Verdiblancos, which was ratified by the referee. In this way, Willian José took responsibility and unbalanced the scoreboard with a nice definition at 45 + 3 ‘ .

Already in the second half, Betis managed to have peace of mind. In the 64th minute, a corner came in favor of the visit and the ball could not be cleared by the Helsinki defence. There Willian José appeared again to place the 0-2 in favor of the Sevillians .

Of course, there was also time for scares. Three minutes later, Malik Abubakari got the cut for the HJK which allowed them to rejoice to save a point. However, the goal was reviewed by VAR where it was detected that the Ghanaian striker was in forward position. .

In the 82nd minute, Claudio Bravo again had to intervene quickly to avoid an own goal . Guido Rodríguez tried to clear a ball in the box, but he couldn’t give it the right direction and the ball ended up going towards the Chilean team’s goal who had to dive to keep the ball.

With this result, Betis leads Group C with three points and a goal difference of +2 . Second are the Ludogorets Razgrad of Bulgaria who won 2-1 against Rome of José Mourinho who finished third, while the helsinki He was in last place in the group.

At the next date, the group of Pellegrini and Bravo will have to receive Ludogorets on September 15 for the second day.