The situation
The Coliseum is not a good place to shoot action scenes and it wasn’t this time either. From there, a Madrid of minimum services emerged as the provisional leader in a game in which few things happened beyond an early goal from Militao that changed everything. Over him and a clear technical superiority Ancelotti’s team swung to tie the three points without squeezing the legs. It already smells like Classic. Getafe had order, was competitive and left the game open until the end, but they needed to change speed when the scoreboard went against them. Going back is not the verb that best conjugates. Ancelotti has improved his letters from spring to autumn . From whom to put that overwhelmed him upon his arrival (remember that right wing along which many paraded and no one stayed and a bench full of invisibles) has passed to whom to remove, blessed predicament. Even in the extreme situation that was presented to him in Getafe, without Courtois and without Benzema . There is no sustainable team without a great goalkeeper and without a great scorer, say the success manuals. Well, without one and without the other, Madrid had to play, and since its coach has Getafe as a granite team, he doubled the muscular supplement: Valverde, Tchouameni and Camavingato wrap up Modric, who will only coincide with Kroos in the big ceremonies (the Classic, to begin with). A vigorous midfield versus another patched up by the absences of Arambarri and Maksimovic, the backbones of Quique’s team. Football admits teams of all conditions. Getafe’s forte is getting heavy, acting unfriendly, waiting for the opponent to fill up on the ball and finding their chance. He legitimately lives on the prowl, but things become impossible if he enters the game with a goal in his backpack. It happened against Madrid. Modric kicked a corner to the near post and Militao put his header into the kitchen with no opposition other than the breeze. It was minute 4. A fatal mismatch between Mitrovic and Domingos Duarte that forced Getafe to play counter-style against a high-precision Madrid. The team is shedding its skin. Modric is still his axis of rotation, but the youngsters have accepted the inheritance and they already feel part of the crew. Some, like Vinicius, have even been at the helm for a long time. Others, like Rodrygo, are on their way to it.
Valverde, extreme and lateral
Madrid came with the goal under his arm and he held on to dominate the first few minutes and get closer to the second goal. Carvajal missed a forced shot and Rodrygo another more comfortable one. That soon subsided because Getafe recovered from the courage under the orders of Milla, one of those footballers who change the fortunes of a team without it being noticeable to the human eye. He was his first break. Before the break, Getafe had taken the game to their home ground, the one where the less that happens, the better. Madrid began to move away from the area and Getafe to approach it. A left-footed shot from Angeleri crossed the small area like lightning without finding the net or anyone to put a definitive foot on it. By then Valverde had had to lower the volume: he had started as a winger, drifted into a midfielder and even had moments as a false right back. Madrid was spacing out their attacks, but some of them were magnificent, like the one that ended in Rodrygo’s header without placement after a succession of first-touch combinations that disarmed Getafe’s defence. So did a tremendous start from Vinicius that ended in a penalty, invalidated because at the start of the play the ball had gone over the touchline. The VAR zoom detected it.