The situation
Among the many virtues of Madrid, one of the most unexpected is its incredible ability to play dead. It happened again in Balaídos. He believed a great Celta twice that he had him in his fist and ended up beaten because no other team like Ancelotti’s is so close to victory playing between average and bad. In the end he always finds someone to fix it. This time (and so many) it was Modric who provided the first and second aid: he scored a goal in the hard ones and gave Vinicius another in the mature ones. It will be impossible to dose him. He turned the funeral into a festival. Madrid came into the game under shock Casemiro. The mourning already took him in the uniform, but given the general reaction, the occasion would have deserved a minute of silence and a black bracelet if it were not for the seventy-odd million that he leaves, to which must be discounted the eight recoveries per game that he takes. Time will tell if more chickens have come in than come out. The fact is that Tchouameni is left alone behind the wheel in the lowest paid position in this industry. There is no footballer forced to make more decisions per second than the pivot: jump or wait, play at one touch or lead, make a foul before, after or during, be an extra central defender or a surprise arrival, take risks or hold back. to be truly goodIt takes a lot of vocation, little vanity and cooking time , which the French still lack. And with a short instruction he is obliged to form the backbone of the most successful team in the world, where his price will be looked at more than his age. In Balaídos he went from less to more, like the team and was a passing station in the fourth goal. With Celta there is the feeling that he plays more than he wins and that bravery pays fatally in football. This time Coudet nuanced that courage: he maintained his 4-1-3-2, but placed Fran Beltrán, who is not Denis Suárez, in the midfield line ahead of Tapia. In the rest he reaffirmed his principles: a furious pressure, man to man, to Courtois’s balcony in front of a stunned Madrid. The same swoon in Almería, with the orphanhood of Casemiro and Kroos as extras.
Hand to hand
But Aspas, who has seen everything in this world, has already warned that Madrid does not rule, but kills. He knows what he is talking about. In the first approach of Ancelotti’s men, Tchouameni won an aerial duel, Alaba finished it off with a volley and Tapia intercepted it with an outstretched arm and without time to shrink it. The VAR caught him and Benzema converted the penalty against the clamor of Balaídos, who had fresh the three that called him last year. This did not admit debate. Nor the one committed by Militao eleven minutes later. If Tapia’s was the product of recklessness, this was the product of foolishness: the Brazilian jumped with his arm raised to intercept a harmless header from Paciencia. Nor did Aspas fail, who scored for the sixth consecutive game.