Hector Bellerin Sets Up the Opener as Real Betis Win the Copa del Rey

Vegan defender Hector Bellerin has a cup winner's medal in Spain. His cross set up the opening goal as Real Betis beat Valencia 5-4 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the Copa del Rey final at La Cartuja in Seville tonight.

Bellerin, on loan from Arsenal, started at right-back and played the full 120 minutes. In the 11th minute he swung a ball into the box and Borja Iglesias powered a close-range header past Giorgi Mamardashvili. Hugo Duro chipped Valencia level before half-time, and Betis hit the post twice without finding a winner.

In the shootout, Yunus Musah was the only player to miss, and left-back Juan Miranda scored the decisive kick in front of 53,387 fans. It's Betis' first Copa del Rey since 2005 and only the fourth major trophy in the club's history. Captain Joaquin, now 40 and a veteran of the 2005 win, came off the bench and scored his penalty.

Bellerin went vegan at the start of the 2017-18 season, initially as a two-week experiment. He said the change showed up in his recovery and his ankles:

For me the most important thing is that inflammation in my body after games and the speed that my body recovers compared to before. I’ve always had little problems in my ankles when I played very hard games, they’d get very inflamed and stiff.

He says he no longer needs to strap them to play, and that by the third week he was waking up with far more energy. He's also become one of the game's loudest voices on climate, and he invested in English football's greenest club.

This is his second major cup in two years, after he won the FA Cup with Arsenal, his third. Months later he became the second-largest shareholder in vegan club Forest Green Rovers, who are chasing promotion right now. Fellow vegan defender Chris Smalling, now at Roma, is having quite a season in Italy too, a few years after we reported he had gone fully vegan.

A cup final assist, fueled by plants.