Playing for the team
It is almost hard to remember him looking at his level of the last two years, but Thibaut Courtois’s start with Madrid in the fall of 2019 was disappointing. In his first four league games he conceded six goals against Celta, Valladolid, Villarreal and Levante and his first two Champions League games were a painful 3-0 win in Paris and conceding two goals for Bruges in 45 minutes before leaving the pitch for an indisposition. Tibu was an earthly gatekeeper. Everything changed after the first Arab Spanish Super Cup, in January 2020 in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). There the dominant Courtois of the last two seasons was witnessed for the first time and also on Saudi soil, Last year in Riyadh, a good part of that title rested on the gloves of the Belgian goalkeeper. The Spanish and Saudi Arabian Super Cup formula suits him well…
Let’s go to that first Super Cup, that of 2020. Courtois needed a click and he got it precisely when the pressure was most overwhelming. In his first final with Real Madrid and also with the superlative curiosity of being against his previous team in the capital of Spain, Atlético. His display throughout the tournament in Jeddah was imperial, out of eleven shots that were fired between the three sticks, he stopped nine. He could only beat Dani Parejo, in the semifinals (it was also, as now, a Real Madrid-Valencia) and it was a penalty.
Courtois decided the fate of the team
Courtois decided to double down against another rojiblanco team, this time Athletic, the bet. His final last year against Athletic was a compendium of what he has become for Madrid, that goalkeeper who gives titles. With a 2-0 lead, Madrid began to suffer with the intense outbursts of the Bilbao team in the last quarter of an hour that crystallized in a penalty in favor of the lions that could turn the final around. It was the 86th minute of the game and the white team was left with ten players because it was a penalty and Militao was sent off. There Courtois emerged with reflexes, achieving one of the best saves with his feet that a goalkeeper is reminded of in a penalty kick in recent years. A prodigy of reaction speed and flexibility that definitely discouraged Athletic.”If they managed to score there we would have had a final seven or eight minutes of heart attack,” the goalkeeper would say later in the flash interview. Tibu had come to the rescue.