BARCELONA — Diego Costa scored twice as Atletico Madrid beat Valencia 3-0 to maintain its winning home run this season and keep pace with Barcelona at the top of the La Liga table. The in-form forward broke the deadlock on the hour mark and Raul Garcia added a second moments later with Valencia's resistance broken. Costa then missed a penalty but converted a second with nine minutes to go, his 17th league goal of the season putting him level with Real's Cristiano Ronaldo at the top of the scoring charts. “You need to show personality and fight for your achievements so after missing the first penalty I wanted to take the second,” Costa told reporters. “Valencia played well in the first half and we knew that we had to do a bit more especially in attack which we did.” Atletico is level on 43 points with Barcelona which beat Villarreal 2-1 Saturday, while third-placed Real Madrid lost further ground following a 2-2 draw at Osasuna. Atletico started slowly with Gabi Fernandez and Tiago Cardoso quiet in the engine room and there were only flickers of life from their forwards. It upped its level after halftime and Costa dribbled in from the left wing with Victor Ruiz backing off before slotting home. Minutes later it was further in front when Raul Garcia knocked in a loose ball in the area. Costa was then upended in the area by Ruiz and took the penalty himself but Diego Alves saved well with his feet. Atletico was now ripping open the Valencia defense and Antonio Barragan fouled Costa in the area before the striker found the top corner with his spot-kick. Earlier, Real Sociedad bounced back from its Champions League exit with a resounding 5-1 win over bottom side Real Betis and Sevilla and Athletic Bilbao shared the spoils in a 1-1 draw. Bilbao stayed fourth on 30 points and Sevilla climbed to seventh on 23. Sociedad lies sixth with 26 points and Betis is two points adrift at the foot of the table with 10 points. Juve six clear In Rome, Napoli kept its hopes of a first Serie A title since 1990 alive with an epic 4-2 win over 10-man Inter Milan after a Carlos Tevez hat trick had put leader Juventus six points clear with a 4-0 rout of Sassuolo Sunday. Goals from Gonzalo Higuain, Dries Mertens, Blerim Dzemaili and Jose Callejon saw Rafael Benitez beat his old club in a hugely entertaining contest and go eight points behind Juventus in third place after falling 11 behind earlier in the day. Goran Pandev missed an added time penalty after winning the spot kick himself just after coming on as a substitute, but it made no difference to the result, and Inter stays fifth on 28 points, seven away from Champions League football. Fiorentina took fourth spot with a comfortable 3-0 defeat of Bologna in which Giuseppe Rossi scored his 13th goal of the season. — Agencies
