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#2 Barcelona continue La Liga dominance in Copa del Rey
For over a century of the Copa del Rey's existence, the draws were made to favour the elite sides, with only a handful of lower division teams eligible for the competition.
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This preference coupled with the two-legged nature of the previous tournaments meant that the bigger sides had ample time to recover from any shock first-leg deficits and made 'giant killings' a relative rarity in the Copa del Rey unlike the FA Cup in England.
However, changes to the rules of eligibility this season expanded the tournament to accommodate 125 teams and banished the two-legged ties until the semi-finals.
The result of this is that previously unheralded clubs had the chance to tee up with stronger opposition and the fact that lower-ranked teams had home advantage saw world-class players travel to Estadio Can Misses (in Ibiza), Estadio Las Gaunas (in Logrones) among others.
Expectedly, most of the fixtures ended in wins for the more established sides, although fourth division side Real Jaen knocked out Alaves in the first round, while Ibiza ran Barcelona ragged and Cultural Leonesa took Atletico Madrid to extra-time in the round-of-32 before eliminating them from the competition.
Heading into the last 16, 10 of the teams in the hat were La Liga sides, four from the Segunda Division, and two from the third-tier of the league format.
La Liga sides who took on lower division opponents all qualified, while Real Sociedad and Barcelona had too much firepower for fellow top-flight clubs Osasuna and Leganes respectively.
Sevilla and Segunda side Miranda would clash in the last fixture of the round-of-16 and if Miranda should see off the Andalusians, they would be the only 'small side' to compete in the quarter-final.
Regardless, the lower division sides have shown that they have what it takes to compete with the bigger guns and giant killings would be more pronounced in the Copa del Rey in future.
