In the second amphitheater of the Bernabéu there is a man who, when the Madrid midfield catches the ball, stands up and indicates with his arm where to direct the game. “Lucas is alone!”, and Kroos releases it to Lucas Vázquez, who was asking for it on the right. Suddenly, Rüdiger has no outlet for the ball and this man, with red cheeks, stands up and shouts from above the stadium, waving his hands, where he should send it. The German pays attention to him. There are 15 or 20 minutes in which Madrid’s actions obey perfectly the instructions of an intoxicated man but with clear ideas regarding the game, which, however, does not succeed: with him in charge, the team does not find solutions.
Madrid is clearly thick, tired and overly apathetic; Madrid has the disease of nostalgia, a sophisticated apathy that assails it after every great triumph. Nothing anymore, for them, has the brilliance, intensity and vertigo of those days of fighting in Manchester. Proof of this is that City took 800 corners with the best centering and finishing arsenal in Europe and did not scratch anything; Barcelona, in the first, scored a goal. Little things that say more about the mind than the game, because inside the area there were almost the same as in Manchester.
Around the 30th minute, Madrid stops paying attention to the man in the second amphitheater, or so he complains with angry fuss. He told Modric to open to his left and Modric passed him, and hit it short behind him. By then, and it will be confirmed later, the match is already in the history of the worst classics played and to be played. Madrid at 0-1 wakes up a little. It is likely that the players decided to pay attention to another fan. In the miracle of football, things like that happen. You only have to get up to go to the bathroom for the opponent to score a goal and you blame it on your prostate; “I shouldn’t have gone to pee, I had to hold on, I can never leave them alone,” laments a fan sitting two seats from the man who one day coached Madrid in a 20-minute classic.
The match? It doesn’t matter at all. Madrid had a duel against Barcelona after the beating and emotional revolutions against City and Barcelona had a duel against Madrid after a European elimination and a success for its eternal rival. But the calendar is diabolical and the two, face to face, don’t know what to do against each other. Until Fermín’s goal, an unexpected protagonist; 1-2, reality check in the stadium and on the field. The improvised coach took the gold cup at half-time, that cup that finishes your technical and vocal skills, and was in Maradona Russia 2018 mode, when he ended up intubated.
But Madrid has woken up. Perhaps because of the Fermín celebration, which has enervated the Bernabéu, perhaps because even tired men have at the bottom of their tiredness the swan song of desire, the ultimate will that can be deposited on a piece of paper or on a goal. Great goal from Lucas Vázquez (one day we have to talk about Lucas Vázquez) to a beastly pass (another) from Vinicius (another day we will have to talk about Vinicius’s decisive assists). And with the stadium on the comeback horse and Barcelona half lost, Madrid stabbed the League in stoppage time and took out its heart; the same one who stabbed her in Barcelona at a similar minute, Jude Bellingham. Great team goal and final madness. By then there was no one to order anything at the Bernabéu; Fate trains Madrid and that always waits to be written in the end. Almost always in the same direction.
You can follow The USA Print in Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
_
