VALENCIA qualified for the Champions League on Saturday, and Chinese forward Wu Lei scored to help Espanyol beat Real Sociedad to take the final place for next season’s Europa League.

Valencia knew that a win away to Valladolid, who had nothing to play for, would assure it the fourth place in the Liga Santander for the second consecutive season and it made no mistake with a straightforward 2-0 win.

Carlos Soler opened the scoring in the 36th minute and Rodrigo Moreno assured the win seven minutes after the break.

Valencia’s win meant Getafe finished fifth after a 2-2 draw at home to Villarreal in an entertaining game, where the home side twice led through Francisco Portillo and Nemanja Maksimovic, but was twice hauled back by Vicente Iborra and Gerard Moreno.

Espanyol climbed into the seventh place over Athletic Club Bilbao with a 2-0 win at home to Real Sociedad with goals from Roberto Rosales and Wu Lei in the 58th and 65th minutes of their game.

Espanyol, which hadn’t been higher than ninth in the standings for the entire second half of the season, ended tied on points with Athletic but had the better head-to-head tiebreaker.

Espanyol’s last appearance in a European competition was in the 2006-07 UEFA Cup.

Athletic meanwhile slipped to a 2-0 defeat away to Sevilla, although things could have been much different if Inigo Martinez’s 92nd minute shot had gone in rather than bounced back off the woodwork with the score 1-0 to Sevilla.

Sevilla ended the season in the sixth place.

(SD-Agencies)