Javi Rodríguez Creates One and Scores a Stunner as Celta Vigo Beat Alavés 2-1 at Balaídos

VIGO, Spain · SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2026

Three days after Juventus came to Balaídos and broke Celta Vigo's hearts in the Europa League, the same stadium watched a 21-year-old defender win a league game almost by himself. Celta beat Deportivo Alavés 2-1 on Sunday in LaLiga's Matchday 9, and the match belonged to Javi Rodríguez: the academy centre-back who carried the ball the length of the pitch to create Ferran Jutglà's opener in the 53rd minute, then scored a solo goal of his own in the 71st that Cadena SER called a strike worthy of a winger. Hugo Novoa's spectacular late goal and two enormous saves from goalkeeper Ionuț Radu turned the last five minutes into something far more stressful than Celta wanted, but the points stayed in Vigo — and for a side that had spent the season drawing games it should have won, that felt like the point.

A first half with plenty of tension and no goals

For 45 minutes, this was a game Alavés could reasonably claim to have shaded. Cadena SER's account described a visiting side that started threateningly under Quique Sánchez Flores: Antonio Blanco split the home defence with a through ball, Jonny Otto arrived with advantage in the area, and Radu had to work hard to keep the full-back's effort out. Toni Martínez then threatened the top corner with a header that drifted just wide. EFE's report, carried by Superdeporte, was harsher on the spectacle — a tactical battle of intensity and physical duels in which the one clear first-half chance was a Lucas Boyé header, from a former Celta player in a perfect position, sent straight into Radu's hands — but both accounts agree on the essential fact: Alavés went in at the break with a sense of superiority, and nothing to show for it. Celta, meanwhile, had barely threatened Antonio Sivera at all, beyond a powerful Hugo Álvarez drive from a Couhaib Driouech cross that flew well wide.

Claudio Giráldez acted at half-time. As Superdeporte recorded, the Celta coach withdrew a quiet Williot Swedberg and Ilaix Moriba and sent on Javi Rueda and Aleix Febas, and the change — together with Hugo Burcio taking control of midfield — tilted the game. It still took a defender to break it open.

Javi Rodríguez takes the game away

The opener, in the 53rd minute, started in Celta's own half. Javi Rodríguez played a one-two with Burcio to escape Alavés's first line of pressure, found open road through the middle of the pitch, and carried the ball to the edge of the area before slipping Jutglà in between the lines — Superdeporte's description of a counter-attack finished, as Cadena SER put it, with the Catalan striker completely alone in front of Sivera and finishing with quality, switching the ball across the goalkeeper. It was the kind of goal a playmaker dreams about, produced by a centre-back, and Balaídos — a ground Cadena SER noted was in need of good news after Thursday's Juventus comeback — erupted.

Sánchez Flores responded by sending on Novoa, Mariano Díaz and Denis Suárez, and the game opened up. Then, in the 70th minute, Giráldez played his favourite card: Iago Aspas, the club's talisman, came on for Driouech. What happened next is the detail that will be retold in Vigo all week. With his first touch of the ball, Aspas sent Javi Rodríguez through — VAVEL's report made a point of the first-touch assist — and the defender did the rest himself, driving into the area, leaving three Alavés defenders behind him and beating Sivera with a low, crossed finish to the far post, as Superdeporte described it. TyC Sports called the finish impossible for the goalkeeper. A defender had assisted the first goal and scored the second, and Celta were 2-0 up with 19 minutes to play.

Novoa's rocket, and Radu's wall

Alavés, to their credit, refused to accept the script. The visitors had been accumulating pressure, and in the 87th minute Novoa — the Galician winger playing against the club from his home region — produced what Cadena SER called a missile into the top corner, assisted by Mariano, to make it 2-1 and set up a finish nobody in sky blue had budgeted for. What followed was Radu's moment. EFE's report, via Superdeporte, credited the Romanian goalkeeper with two spectacular late saves, from Boyé and from Mariano, that prevented the equaliser and sealed the three points. TyC Sports counted nine saves from Radu across the match, on a day when Alavés finished with 18 shots — more than their hosts — and still left with nothing.

The result extends two very different runs. EFE noted that Celta have now taken seven points from the last nine available in the league, a surge built on exactly the kind of game they kept failing to close earlier in the season, while Alavés's winless run in LaLiga stretches to five matchdays. For Giráldez, the afternoon also offered the sweetest possible answer to Thursday: a European hangover cured not by rotation or excuses, but by an academy defender deciding that a goalless home game was not an acceptable outcome. Javi Rodríguez will score better goals in his career, perhaps. It is harder to imagine him deciding a match more completely.