Iker Luque Sparks Racing's Comeback Win Over Ten-Man Málaga

Before a ball was kicked at La Rosaleda on Saturday, both teams stood in memorial shirts for a pre-match tribute to Jesús de Miguel, the LED boards carrying his name around the ground — and then Málaga went and played the first half like a team that intended to honour the evening properly. Carlos Dotor put them ahead on 28 minutes, Adrián Niño the provider, and at half-time the home side led a game they had largely controlled, with 28,334 inside La Rosaleda expecting the second half to be a procession.

It was a procession — for about five minutes. Racing came out of the interval a different side, and on 50 minutes Iker Luque levelled it, set up by Pablo Ramón, wheeling away in the black and green away kit in front of the home fans. The equalizer changed the game's temperature completely. Málaga, who had been managing the night, suddenly had to chase it; Racing, who had been surviving it, could smell the space that chasing leaves behind.

Ten minutes after the equalizer, the space arrived. Yassir Zabiri broke away on 60 minutes and finished with his left foot on the fast break — 1–2, and a stadium that had been waiting to celebrate a home win was instead staring at a comeback completed in ten minutes flat. Two goals, ten minutes, and the entire shape of the match inverted: the team that had controlled the first half now needed two goals, and the team that had been hanging on now had something real to protect.

Four minutes later, Málaga's task got harder in the dumbest way. Adam Aznou, already booked, collected a second yellow card on 64 minutes and was sent off — ten men, a goal down, 26 minutes to find two. Plenty of home sides fold at that point. Málaga did the opposite. The final team lines read like a side that refused the script: Málaga finished with eight shots on target to Racing's seven and won the corner count 6–3, pressing a full-strength opponent back into its own half with a man less, the home crowd up and roaring at every half-chance until the last minute of the night.

The full picture of the night sits in the numbers: Racing actually held more of the ball, 53.6 percent to Málaga's 46.4, and took more shots, 21 to 16 — but Málaga put more of theirs on target, eight to seven, and the two goalkeepers' save counts (seven for Racing's, five for Málaga's) tell you which end of the pitch the pressure lived at after the break. Racing's comeback was not a smash-and-grab. It was two clinical finishes in the ten minutes when the game opened up, and then a defensive stand against a ten-man onslaught that never quite produced the equalizer the home performance probably deserved.

The card count charts Málaga's night in miniature. The home side finished with four yellow cards to Racing's two, and the longer the comeback stood, the more the frustration showed in the challenges — Aznou's second yellow was the extreme of it, but the pattern ran through the whole second half: a team that had led the game chasing it harder and harder, and paying for the chasing in bookings. Racing, by contrast, kept their discipline through the siege — two yellows, no one sent off, and a defensive shape that survived the final 26 minutes against ten men who played like twelve.

For José Alberto López and Racing, this is the kind of away win that travels: a goal down at a big ground, a dressing-room reset at half-time, two goals in ten minutes and a lead defended through a red-card siege. For Málaga, the evening will sting precisely because so much of it was theirs — the lead, the late siege, the shot count that mattered — everything except the ten minutes in the middle that decided it. Follow every kick in the Game Center.