Requena Strikes Late as Levante Take a 1-1 Draw at Deportivo

A CORUNA, SPAIN · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2026

For 19 minutes on Friday night, Riazor believed Deportivo La Coruna had finally found the win that has been hiding from them for six weeks. Bil Nsongo's goal just past the hour had the home crowd sensing an end to the drought. Then Levante, who had played on Monday and traveled the length of Spain for this one, produced the move of the match: substitute Petar Ratkov slipped a pass through and Dani Requena finished it in the 82nd minute for a 1-1 draw that, by the end, either side could have stolen.

The bare facts are agreed everywhere the match was recorded. Sportradar's match log and OneFootball's fixture page both close the book at 1-1, scoreless at half-time, with Nsongo scoring in the 63rd minute and Requena answering in the 82nd, Ratkov credited with the assist. It was the opening fixture of La Liga's Matchday 9, played at the Estadio Abanca-Riazor under referee Manuel Jesus Orellana Cid, and it ended with both clubs extending winless runs they would rather not discuss.

A first half with the handbrake on

Nothing about the first 45 minutes suggested a grandstand finish. The teams went in at 0-0, and the match stayed in the pattern the numbers later described: Levante saw more of the ball, Deportivo carried the clearer threat. Sporting Life's match data gives Levante 54 percent of possession and more accurate passes, 343 to Deportivo's 304, yet it was the home side who led on shots on target, five to four, and who created the game's only two big chances. Possession, as it so often does in this fixture, turned out to be a rumor. What Deportivo had was the better of the few openings, and for a long while they could not do anything with them.

That should not have surprised anyone who read the form lines on the way in. Deportivo arrived having lost 3-2 at Real Sociedad on Sunday, their fifth match without a win since a 3-2 victory at Villarreal on September 5. Levante arrived off Monday's wild 3-3 draw with Sevilla, on three days' rest, winless themselves since beating Real Betis 5-2 back on August 29. Two teams short on confidence and, in Levante's case, short on rest: the first half played out exactly as advertised.

Nsongo breaks it open, right after the changes

The game turned on the benches just after the hour. In the 62nd minute Deportivo made a double change, Adria Altimira replacing Ximo Navarro and Adama Traore coming on for Luismi Cruz. Sixty seconds later the ball was in Levante's net. Nsongo, who had started up front alongside Yeremay Hernandez in a 4-4-2, scored in the 63rd minute to make it 1-0, and Riazor had its moment: the drought was over, the night was won, the weekend could begin.

Except Levante's bench had a better idea. In the 69th minute the visitors made their own double change, Jon Ander Olasagasti on for Enzo Bardeli and, decisively, Petar Ratkov on for Oriol Rey. Thirteen minutes later Ratkov was the man who cracked the game open from the other direction, feeding Requena for the equalizer. Requena had started the match in Levante's midfield three, and he finished the move like a forward, leveling the score at 1-1 with eight minutes left. There is a particular cruelty in that sequence for a home crowd: your substitutes freshen the side, their substitute creates the goal.

De la Fuente nearly writes a different ending

Levante, level, did not settle. Adrian de la Fuente was booked in the 89th minute, one of two yellow cards per side in a match with no dismissals, and then, in the seventh minute of stoppage time, the Levante defender let fly from outside the box and forced Leo Roman into the save of the night, the Deportivo goalkeeper turning the shot away toward the top corner. Sporting Life's timeline records the attempt at 90+7', and it is the moment the draw was truly settled: score there, and Levante fly home with three points and Deportivo's winless run stretches to six with a defeat that would have felt twice as heavy.

Instead the whistle went at 90+8' on a draw that the expected-goals ledger says Deportivo shaded. Sporting Life put the xG at 1.08 for the home side to 0.83 for Levante, with Deportivo missing the game's only big chance that did not go in. Read that way, this was two points dropped by the hosts. Read it through Levante's week, though — Monday night football, a 3-3 draw that took something out of them, then a Friday trip to Galicia and a goal down with 27 minutes to play — and it was a point dug out of the ground. Both readings are true, which is usually the sign of a fair result.

What it leaves behind

According to OneFootball's live table, the point takes Deportivo to 11 points from nine matches, with a record of two wins, five draws and two defeats — a season so far built almost entirely on draws, five of them now, and a team that is hard to beat and, at the moment, nearly as hard to watch winning. The wait for a league victory now runs past six weeks, and it does not get easier: Sporting Life's fixture list sends Deportivo to Atletico Madrid next Saturday, October 24.

Levante's road is shorter and sharper. They are back home on Wednesday, October 21, when Athletic Club visit Valencia, and they do it with a game still in hand on most of the division after their September meeting with Athletic was postponed. A side that can score three against Sevilla, five against Betis and still spend the autumn hunting for a second win is one of La Liga's genuine puzzles: the goals are in there somewhere, just rarely on the same night as a clean sheet.

One footnote for the romantics and the gamblers alike: Sports Mole's preview of this match, working through the team news — Deportivo were without the injured Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Marc Casado and Zakaria Eddahchouri, plus the suspended Lorenzo Amatucci — settled on a prediction of exactly 1-1, on the grounds that the two sides could not be separated. It took 82 minutes, one substitute's pass and one goalkeeper's fingertips at the death, but for once the preview had it precisely right. Riazor went home with a point, a lead it could not keep, and a Friday night that promised more than it delivered — which, for both of these clubs right now, is becoming a habit worth breaking.