Real Madrid sets new Spanish unbeaten record at 40 games in comeback thriller at Sevilla

The record looked doomed.

Real Madrid had not lost in 39 games, stretching back to April 6, 2016. A run of 30 wins and nine ties. If Zinedine Zidane’s men could avoid defeat at Sevilla – which trails Real by just four points at the top of La Liga – in the second leg of their round-of-16 jostle in the Copa del Rey, they would break Barcelona’s Spanish record. The Catalans did, however, win two more games in their run, set just in March of 2016.

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It looked like a pretty good bet, since Real Madrid had won the first leg 3-0 last week. So even though Zidane would run out a starting lineup of mostly backups – bereft entirely of the BBC trident of Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and the injured Gareth Bale – Sevilla sure wasn’t going to waste much effort in this busy time of the season trying to get back into this.

Wrong.

In order to pull a 3-3 tie out of the fire – for a 6-3 aggregate win and a spot in the Copa del Rey quarterfinals – Real twice had to come back from deficits. The defending European champions, in fact, were two goals down going into the 83rd minute before Sergio Ramos’s daring Panenka from the penalty spot and a 93rd-minute goal from Benzema salvaged the draw and the streak.

In the 10th minute, Real Madrid defender Danilo sent a diving header from a dangerous Pablo Sarabia cross back at his own goal. Only rather than playing it back to goalkeeper Kiko Casilla, he beat him with it for an own goal.

The sides exchanged lots of chances in a riveting game.

And just past halftime, Real got an equalizer it deserved after Mariano Diaz and Toni Kroos had threatened. A corner was punched away by Casilla. Marco Asensio picked it up outside of his own box, beat Matias Kranevitter at midfield, went the length of the field, held off Luciano Vietto and played his finish through goalkeeper David Soria’s legs and off the inside of the far post.

But Sevilla would build up another lead. Adil Rami found Sergio Escudero, who crossed to Stevan Jovetic. The Montenegrin’s bouncing volley beat Casilla and gave the loanee from Inter Milan a goal on his Sevilla debut.

Vicente Iborra doubled the lead, scrambling home a goal set up by Samir Nasri in the 77th minute.

Real had another comeback in store for the home team, though. Kranevitter made contact in the box with Casemiro in the 83rd, and the midfielder tumbled gratefully. That’s when Ramos chipped in the penalty to bring Real within one.

Benzema, a substitute, came to the rescue deep in injury time. He dribbled through a forest of defenders, sometimes fortuitously, and then saw his finish deflected past Soria by defender Clement Lenglet.

Real has now won 30 and tied 10 matches without losing one, going back to a Wolfsburg loss in the Champions League – which the Blancos would overcome in the return leg to win the entire tournament.

The 40-game streak is tied with Nottingham Forrest’s English record from 1978 and still trails AC Milan’s 1992-93 run of 42 games.

Three more games without a loss will equal Juventus’s record unbeaten run in Europe’s major leagues of 43, set in the 2011-12 season.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.