Philippe Coutinho scored his first Barcelona goal as the Spanish side beat Valencia to reach a record fifth successive Copa del Rey final.<\/p>\n
Coutinho, making his fifth appearance since a \u00a3142m move from Liverpool, came on in the second half and acrobatically steered home from Luis Suarez\u2019s cross.<\/p>\n
That put Barca, cup winners in the past three years, 2-0 up on aggregate in the semi-final second leg in Valencia, before Ivan Rakitic added another.<\/p>\n
Barca will face Sevilla in the final.<\/p>\n
Valencia \u2013 who are third in La Liga, 18 points behind leaders Barca \u2013 had two key chances but were well beaten by a team that looks certain to win the league title.<\/p>\n
At 0-0, striker Rodrigo headed against the crossbar while Jasper Cillessen produced a stunning instinctive save to deny full-back Jose Luis Gaya from point-blank range following Coutinho\u2019s opener.<\/p>\n
After Rakitic coolly rounded off a late counter attack, finishing from Suarez\u2019s pass, Barca brought on 23-year-old Colombian defender Yerry Mina \u2013 a \u00a310.4m January signing from Palmeiras \u2013 for his debut.<\/p>\n
Sevilla, sixth in the Spanish table 25 points behind the leaders, reached their second Copa del Rey final in three seasons with a\u00a03-1\u00a0aggregate win over La Liga rivals Leganes.<\/p>\n
Barca have won the competition three times in a row since losing to Real Madrid in the 2014 final.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philippe Coutinho scored his first Barcelona goal as the Spanish side beat Valencia to reach a record fifth successive Copa del Rey final. Coutinho, making his fifth appearance since a \u00a3142m move from Liverpool, came on in the second half and acrobatically steered home from Luis Suarez\u2019s cross. That put Barca, cup winners in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":399973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[319,564,16945,16944],"class_list":["post-399972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barcelona","tag-citi-sports","tag-copa-final","tag-coutinh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=399972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/399973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=399972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=399972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=399972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}