Malaga are the closest La Liga football team to Marbella and there is a large contingency of regular supporters that travel up from Marbella every home game.
For this reason, here at Celebrities in Marbella we like to report on some of the bigger achievements of Malaga CF.
As we all know football can be a cruel game and last night was no exception, living up to those words in epic proportions.
Malaga had held off Borussia Dortmund at La Rosaleda despite a barrage of goal attempts, but they had stood strong and held out for a 0-0 draw, and more importantly had not conceded an away goal, cheered on by the fans from all over the province, including the Marbella faithful.
Now it was the return leg in Germany and the in-form Borussia Dortmund were the favourites to walk past the little team from the Costa del Sol. However, Malaga had other ideas and came out battling and looking the better team in the first half. That was further indicated by Joaquin scoring the opening goal on 25 minutes to screams being heard all over Marbella.
Now all Malaga needed to do, having scored a vital away goal, was to hang on but there was still so much time left on the clock and come the 40th minute Borussia Dortmund got the equaliser thanks to Lewandowski.
1-1 at half time was not a disaster and as at it stood, Malaga would go through to the semi finals.
They came out for the second half and the Costa del Sol fell silent. Willy Caballero was once again in amazing form and kept Malaga in the tie on a number of occasions and with 80 minutes gone Malaga were looking good for the next round. Then Malaga snatched another goal thanks to Eliseu in the 82nd minute, despite hints of offside.
2-1 Malaga with 8 minutes and stoppage time left looked as if they had made the semi finals. Dortmund now needed 2 goals to go through – impossible surely!
90 minutes up and from somewhere the 4th umpire indicated 5 minutes of additional time. Step up Reus of Borussia Dortmund to score an equaliser in the 91st minute.
Still Malaga needn’t panic they just needed to hold off for 4 more minutes but in the 93rd minute disaster struck. Several players looked to be offside for Borussia Dortmund as they hit the back of the net again but neither the referee or the linesman had noticed and Borussia Dortmund were given the goal that was to knock Malaga out of the Champions League.
Tears were shed across Marbella and the entire Costa del Sol as Malaga came so close to making more history. Never had they got to these stages of a major tournament before. It was especially cruel for Malaga’s manager Pellegrini who had flown back from overseas having just buried his father.
It was more than a shame that Malaga were eliminated to a controversial goal, but we see this happen time and time again in these big matches. These matches mean so much to small a club like Malaga.
The Spanish TV had decided to show the Galatasaray v Real Madrid match despite them going into the match with an uncatchable lead and effectively already in the semi-finals. Questions should be asked as to why, with everything still to play for, Malaga were not live on TVE.
That’s why you can always rely on Marbella based Talk Radio Europe and Paul Breen-Turner for live commentary of all Malaga games as they are the only station to have live match commentary in English for Malaga games whether home or away.