SEVILLE, Spain (AP) \u2014 Real Madrid\u2019s already slim hopes of winning La Liga were dealt another blow when Real Betis scored a stoppage-time equalizer in a pulsating 1-1 result on Friday.<\/p>\n
Madrid was left trailing league leader Barcelona by eight points with only five games to play. Barcelona has a game in hand at Getafe on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The match started well for visiting Madrid as Vinicius Junior scored for the second time in four days. Betis goalkeeper \u00c1lvaro Valles could only parry Federico Valverde\u2019s long range shot and the Brazilian striker followed up to slot in the rebound.<\/p>\n
Betis, though, was not overawed and Andriy Lunin, in goal for the injured Thibaut Courtois, made at least two world-class saves to keep his side in the game.<\/p>\n
At the other end, Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 had a goal chalked off for offside, annulling a superb assist from Trent Alexander-Arnold.<\/p>\n
Betis kept pushing for an equalizer and it came in the dying seconds.<\/p>\n
Ferland Mendy went down and appealed for a foul but the referee waved play on and former Arsenal defender H\u00e9ctor Beller\u00edn calmly side-footed home inside a packed penalty area to the delight of the 54,000 fans at Betis\u2019 Estadio La Cartuja.<\/p>\n
The result meant Madrid has failed to win five of its last six games in all competitions.<\/p>\n
Betis, meanwhile, was in fifth place, six points ahead of Getafe and seven behind Atletico Madrid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEVILLE, Spain (AP) \u2014 Real Madrid\u2019s already slim hopes of winning La Liga were dealt another blow when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[735,7014,640,7015,82,1561,1562,1558,1560,1559,109,1496,1917,2420],"class_list":{"0":"post-14176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seville","8":"tag-andriy-lunin","9":"tag-betis-real-madrid-laliga","10":"tag-federico-valverde","11":"tag-hector-bellerin","12":"tag-madrid","13":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","14":"tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","15":"tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","16":"tag-product-32554-ap-online-soccer-game-stories","17":"tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","18":"tag-seville","19":"tag-thibaut-courtois","20":"tag-trent-alexander-arnold","21":"tag-vinicius-junior"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}