Mirandés stays on dream cup run

Third-tier side Mirandés pulled off another King's Cup shock on Tuesday night, eliminating Primera División Racing Santander after dispatching Villarreal in the previous round - the final straw for club president Fernando Roig, who promptly sacked coach Juan Carlos Garrido. Racing will not be parting company with Juanjo González, who has only been in the job a month, but Mirandés may do well to tie its coach, Carlos Pouso, down to a new contract swiftly; while Racing is one point above Primera relegation trouble, Mirandés is six points clear in Segunda B Group II and poised for a first-ever promotion to Spain's "silver league."

Pablo Infante may also be in the mind of some clubs further up the pecking order after becoming the competition's top scorer with one from the penalty spot in Santander. Infante now has five cup strikes, including one in the previous leg against Racing and a brace at Villarreal.

"We may never experience anything like this again," said Pouso, who stated he would like Espanyol, which faced Córdoba in the last 16, for a quarterfinal clash. "It's a first division club and it will be more fun for our fans," Pouso said.

While the miracle of Mirandés was unfolding in El Sardinero, Mallorca was busy crafting one of its own in the Ono Estadi. Two goals down from the first leg at Real Sociedad, Diego Ifrán put the visitor three up after a quarter of an hour, leaving Mallorca requiring four goals to reach the quarterfinals. These it scored in a frantic six-minute first-half spell, the tricky Uruguayan Chori Castro netting twice, to go into the break 4-3 up on aggregate. Mallorca added two more in the second period to hand Real its biggest cup defeat since 1968 and will now play the winner of the tie between Albacete and Athletic.

Real Madrid, meanwhile, edged past Málaga 1-0 on the south coast. After going two goals down in the Bernabéu during a first half that did not please José Mourinho one iota, Real clawed its way back into the contest with three second-half goals, rounded off by the club's current prize asset, Karim Benzema. The brooding France international was almost written off by Mourinho as a shirker after a series of lackluster displays matched by Gallic indifference during the early part of the Portuguese's tenure. But it was Benzema who finally killed off Málaga's second-leg challenge, scoring his 17th of the season two minutes after taking the field.

Málaga goalkeeper Willy Caballero should have been awarded the goal, letting Benzema's drive wriggle through his grasp and into the net but he had previously kept his side in the match, especially in saving smartly from Ronaldo before his blunder. The Portugal forward's current malaise was summed up toward the end when he swung at a rebound in front of an open goal and connected with nothing more than air. This elicited a wry smile from Ronaldo; his first and last of the evening. The prospect of his personal bugbear, Barcelona, in the next round will do little to cheer the number 7.