For an hour this looked like a contest. By the end it was a demolition. Levante turned a taut, see-sawing afternoon into a five-goal statement, burying Real Betis under a barrage of headers and set-piece menace to win 5-2 and announce themselves as awkward company for anyone.

Twice Betis clawed their way back to parity, and twice it counted for nothing. The visitors will look at the scoreline and struggle to reconcile it with the way they matched their hosts blow for blow through the first half. But football keeps no ledger of moral victories, and Levante simply refused to stop coming.

Roger Brugué was the afternoon's tormentor-in-chief, striking twice inside the second half to break the game open, but the story was collective: a home side that attacked every corner as if it were a penalty, and a Betis defence that could not hold the line when it mattered most.

A first half of blows

Levante drew first blood on 24 minutes, and it came from the routine that would haunt Betis all afternoon. Jon Ander Olasagasti swung in a cross following a corner and Adrián de la Fuente rose in the centre of the box to plant a header into the bottom-left corner. It was clean, decisive and a warning that went unheeded.

Betis, to their credit, answered with quality. On 34 minutes Marc Bartra advanced from the back and lashed a right-footed shot from the centre of the box into the top-right corner, a strike of real conviction that levelled matters and steadied the visitors' nerves. For a spell they looked the more composed of the two.

Then came a first-half finale of pure theatre. In first-half stoppage time, on 45+1, Enzo Bardeli picked his spot from outside the box and curled a right-footed effort into the bottom-left corner to restore Levante's lead. The celebrations had barely subsided when Betis struck straight back: on 45+4, Marc Roca delivered from a corner and Rodrigo Riquelme headed home from close range into the high centre of the net. Two-all at the interval, and both sets of supporters filed away breathless.

Brugué breaks the deadlock

Whatever equilibrium existed at the break did not survive long. On 56 minutes Levante went back in front, and once more the corner flag proved Betis's undoing. Bardeli, this time the provider, floated a cross into the danger area and Brugué met it with a header into the bottom-right corner. The pattern was becoming impossible to ignore.

Fourteen minutes later the game slipped away entirely. Brugué struck again on 70 minutes, this time with his left foot from very close range, steering the ball into the centre of the goal to make it 4-2. Two goals in a quarter of an hour had transformed a knife-edge contest into a comfortable lead, and the noise inside the Estadi Ciutat de València swelled to match.

Betis had no more comebacks in them. The legs that had carried them level twice in the first half looked heavy, and Levante scented blood, pouring forward with the abandon of a side that could do no wrong. The visitors, so disciplined early, now found gaps everywhere.

A flourish at the death

There was still time for one final indignity. Deep into stoppage time, on 90+5, Karl Etta Eyong crossed and Olasagasti climbed to head into the bottom-right corner, completing his own personal bookend to the afternoon. Having provided the assist for the opening goal, he supplied the exclamation mark on the fifth.

Five goals, five different scorers among the home ranks, and a set-piece masterclass that Betis simply had no answer for. Levante attacked every dead ball as an opportunity and were rewarded again and again, their headers raining in from crosses the visitors could not clear.

It was the kind of performance that lingers in the memory long after the numbers fade, a full-throated attacking display that turned a tight game into a landslide through sheer relentlessness.

What it means

The result lifts Levante to eighth on four points, their record now reading one win, one draw and one defeat. More telling than the position is the manner of it: a team that had scored and conceded in equal measure this season suddenly found a ruthless streak, plundering five goals to swing their balance emphatically in the right direction. On this evidence, few sides will relish visiting the Estadi Ciutat de València.

For Real Betis the afternoon is a chastening one. They remain fifth on six points from three matches, two wins and now a heavy loss, and the alarming detail is defensive: five goals conceded here alone leaves them with five against for the campaign. Twice they showed the character to level; not once did they show the resilience to hold on, and the set-piece frailty on show will demand urgent attention.

Betis will point to the fine finishes from Bartra and Riquelme as proof that the attacking pieces are in place, but a back line breached five times in a single afternoon cannot be papered over. Their early-season promise now sits uneasily alongside a warning that will not be easily forgotten.

Levante, meanwhile, march on with belief coursing through them and a template that works. If they can attack set pieces with even half this ferocity week after week, mid-table will not contain them for long. For now, they savour a rout that felt like a turning point.