2024-04-19 21:55:39
After that magical night at the Bernabéu two years ago, Juanma Rodríguez coined the intuition of the respectable into a maxim: “God belongs to Madrid”. But football and faith forget, and what weighed most heavily in the run-up to Wednesday night was last year’s beating. Just the memory of that Bernabéu made the air float with a “what if…?” unspeakable. In the first half, the expected script: suffocating pressure from the English and Lunin acting as a midfielder. A solitary long ball broke Guardiola’s defenses and, thanks to a Zidanesque control by Bellingham, the classic white blow arrived.
The second part continued along canonical lines. Initial bullshit from the whites in an extended version: City handled the ball and it did more harm than good, but Madrid didn’t even smell it. In the bar, heads looked more at the floor than at the screen. And in those, the expected tie arrived. But lo and behold, the white goblin appeared, unleashed, like Deus ex machina and sent the classics to hell. Minutes passed and the tragedy was felt; City continued its siege, but the dead man did not die: the Great and Most Happy Armada was not shipwrecked before the perfidious Albion. Little by little, heads returned to the screen and defensive actions garnered timid applause. Madrid suffered a Numantine mutation, converted into an impregnable iron wall. Lunin stopped and stopped, Nacho dribbled him and avoided the second on the white line, and Carvajal stood as Blas de Lezo against Gascoigne’s successor – or Grealish, as you prefer – and that Tasmanian devil called Doku. When we wanted to realize, every small action was celebrated as a victory. There was no longer resignation but desperation, which is his mutation when there is still hope. Real Madrid was Numancia, Troy. The defense made epic. No dribbles, no goals: marking, clearances and saves.
Two years ago, when there were just a few minutes left in the game and Madrid fell 1-0 at the Bernabéu, a sign appeared on the broadcast with the probability of qualification for each team: 99 for City, 1 for Madrid. On Wednesday, any sign between the 45th and 120th minutes would have indicated 100 to 0. And I wouldn’t lie. Winning the game was, a blessed paradox, statistically impossible. In extra time, the match entered into a fight that was reminiscent of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer triumphs as a boxer by simply enduring all the opponent’s punches until he, exhausted, collapses with a simple push. With City dying and Madrid standing, the penalties arrived.
If you haven’t already, I recommend checking out the national radio stations to hear the staff’s reactions as the launchers were unveiled. They have no waste. City, with elite pitchers, thanks to that bench where one does not distinguish the starter from the substitute. Madrid, with the defenders. In RAC1 they couldn’t believe it. In COPE, Paco González suspected tragedy and Lama scolded him for not believing. Madrid’s defense shouldered the responsibility of closing the match that had lasted for 120 minutes. Lucas Vazquez He stood on the whitewash tapping the ball in an exercise of impeccable Galicianism, just like his shot. Nacho’s, a Brazilian nine. The surrealism reached record levels when their goalkeeper Ederson took the last shot and scored a great goal. One was missing for Madrid. Our friend Pepe said what we were all thinking and no one dared to say: “Antonio!”. Deus ex machina He had spoken and, while we were murmuring “no, man, no, what is Antonio going to be like…”, crazy Rüdiger headed towards the penalty spot.
Ladies and gentlemen, the intuition has been consummated: God is a Madrid fan. Or at least, he hates perfidious Albion. Real Madrid won at Trafalgar and conquered England. How the ecclesiastical split turned out. Nobody knows what is left for this Madrid, which seems like the child who raise the difficulty level of the boring video game. Perhaps the final frontier, the “Spanish Gibraltar” of football, is to win the Euro Cup final against England this summer. God willing, of course.
#God #Madrid #Juan #Cermeño