Lucky seven as Joaquin secures Valencia win

Valencia showed there was life after David Villa as a quick-fire Joaquin brace helped the Champions League hopefuls to an opening 3-1 win over Malaga on Saturday.

Winger Joaquin, 29, inherited Villa’s number seven shirt following the striker’s 40-million-euro move to Barcelona and he took on the goalscoring mantle by scoring twice in four minutes to seal victory for Valencia.

Debutant Aritz Aduriz had put Valencia ahead nine minutes into his debut before Sebas Fernandez equalised shortly before the break.

With the scores level former Spain international Joaquin made the breakthrough, cutting inside on his right foot to thunder in a low shot on 70 minutes and then volleying a second four minutes later to wrap up the points.

Valencia, who also sold attacking midfielder David Silva to Manchester City in the summer, join Athletic Bilbao on three points at the summit.

Earlier, Spanish World Cup winner Fernando Llorente scored the decisive goal as Bilbao won 1-0 at promoted Hercules in the curtain-raiser to the 2010/11 La Liga season.

The 25-year-old Llorente powered in a header 60 seconds after the restart for the first goal of the new season and it was enough to give Bilbao the three points.

Bilbao finished an impressive eighth last season and hope to be pushing for a European spot once again, having held on to their Spanish international stars Llorente and Javi Martinez.

Hercules had their chances with Javier Portillo — once tipped for great things as a youngster with Real Madrid — the main culprit, spurning two opportunities.

Sevilla are in action later on Saturday, looking to to put their Champions League qualifying loss to Braga behind them against promoted Levante.

Coach Antonio Alvarez has come under real criticism for failing to qualify for the Champions League and needs a win to appease the disgruntled Sevilla supporters.

On Sunday Jose Mourinho leads out Real Madrid for the first time when his side travel to a Real Mallorca team managed by Real old boy Michael Laudrup.

Mourinho has been brought in on a bumper contract to try and break Barcelona’s stranglehold on La Liga and put the club back among Europe’s elite.

Champions Barcelona begin their defence on Sunday at Racing Santander and have been busy fine-tuning their squad with the capture of Argentina captain Javier Mascherano from Liverpool for a reported 22 million euros.

European Super Cup winners Atletico Madrid, who beat Inter Milan 2-0 in Friday’s showpiece game in Monaco, are in action on Monday when they entertain Sporting Gijon.