Madrid: Barcelona broke a club record with their 29th consecutive game unbeaten when their second-stringers salvaged a 1-1 draw against Valencia in the Copa del Rey semi-finals on Wednesday.
Barcelona reached their third straight Copa final 8-1 on aggregate after a first leg 7-0 win at the Camp Nou last week.
Striker Alvaro Negredo gave Valencia the lead in a breakaway before halftime, but Cameroon-born youngster Wilfrid Kaptoum, a member of Barcelona’s B team, equalised in the 84th, two minutes into his senior debut.
Barcelona eclipsed the record shared with Pep Guardiola’s 2011 squad, despite playing without nearly all of their regular starters at the Mestalla Stadium in Valencia, including Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, and Neymar. Coach Luis Enrique used youngsters, with Ivan Rakitic the only experienced starter.
“Honestly, the record wasn’t our main goal,” Rakitic said. “We are happy, but the most important thing is to win titles at the end of the season. We would all exchange the record for titles.”
The draw will increase pressure on Valencia coach Gary Neville, the former England defender who has been struggling in his first head-coaching job. He also used second-stringers in his squad, resting some of the starters for the Spanish league game against Espanyol on Saturday.
It will be Barcelona’s sixth Copa del Rey final in the last eight seasons.
“We are thrilled to make it to another final,” Enrique said. “Our fans are getting spoiled, just look at the number of Copa finals that we’ve played in the last few years. It tells a lot about this club’s capacity to reinvent itself, it tells a lot about the type of players that we have.”
Enrique’s team haven’t lost since a 2-1 defeat at Sevilla in the seventh round of the Spanish league in October.
Guardiola’s streak ended with a 3-1 loss at Real Betis in the Copa del Rey quarter-finals. His team won 23 games and drew five, scoring 85 goals and conceding 14.
Enrique’s squad has won 23 games and drawn six, scoring 87 and conceding 15.
“It’s a small step to try to regain some confidence and keep us in the right direction to turn things around,” Valencia forward Pablo Piatti said. “We are disappointed, the team hasn’t met expectations so far.”
Only about 16,000 fans showed up at the 55,000-seat Mestalla. A supporter held a banner that read: “Bye bye, Neville.”
“I’m thankful for the fans who came to the stadium. Some didn’t want to come and that was their right,” Neville said. “We weren’t playing under the best circumstances after what happened (in the first leg) last week, but the players played with dignity. We deserved to win.”
