The lethal blow of 'Panda' Iglesias and Joaquín's final show: "What an asshole one becomes over the years"

• Chronicle Betis gets into a final with suspense

It has not been, far from it, the most beautiful goal of the 30 that Borja Iglesias has scored in his 106 games with Betis.

However, his blow in added time against Rayo Vallecano, when a sharp extra time stood between his team and the Cup final, is already, for the moment, the most important target of his career.

From now on, he will be able to boast that it was he who opened the door to the Verdiblanco team's fifth cup final.

From the last one, in 2005, 17 long years had passed.

Valencia awaits on the horizon.

The Galician striker, who also scored in the first round in Vallecas, barely needed six minutes to make the Benito Villamarín overflow with joy.

Six minutes with fear in the body after that shoe by

that Borja witnessed stunned from the band.

's letters

to resolve the matter were him, who replaced

, and the veteran

(40 years old), who refused to say goodbye to football without a final Cup final.

The Sevillian captain was the one who devised the play with which Betis would end up leveling the duel.

With which Borja, on the line, would impale the net, with all his soul, the goal that, unfortunately for the combative Rayo, is worth a final.

He may have even finished it off with the panda bear ink he has tattooed on one of his ankles.

"We dreamed of this and now we have to finish it. These people deserve it, they have been waiting for many years," Iglesias proclaimed, levitating amid the ecstasy of Villamarín.

"For me this is new, I have never experienced something like this. For many it is the first final. We are going to face it with great enthusiasm", he added.

Joaquín, the only survivor

Joaquín, who entered eight minutes from the end, is the only survivor of that last golden chapter in the club's history.

It happened in 2005, on the lawn of the late Vicente Calderón.

Betis beat Osasuna in extra time (2-1) and the current Verdiblanco captain, who hastened the last sips of his long career, played the 120 minutes.

Two members of the current coaching staff were also on that team:

(assistant coach) and

(goalkeeping coach).

The Cadiz winger, who also lifted the 2008 Cup, that time with Valencia, also at the Vicente Calderón, would sum up his night with two sentences clinging to an inseparable smile.

"How nice it is to be from Betis," he said first.

"What an asshole one becomes over the years," he added later.

It will be the fifth time that the Sevillian team has fought for the Cup. They have won it twice (1977 and 2005) and have lost it just as many (1931 and 1997).

's first final in Spain

.

At the gates of their first final, Rayo Vallecano stayed, when they believed that everything would be resolved, at least, in extra time.

"I love the Cup. It has given me a lot as a player and now as a coach. It is a beautiful competition. It makes me angry because the most beautiful match is the final but Betis will enjoy that. We have all dreamed that it could be possible to sneak in there", recognized

, after falling in the semifinals that, despite everything, are already part of the history of the Vallecano team.

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