Madrid – Chelsea: match fixed in minute one

The game began to end in minute one, when João Felix was left alone running in the direction of Courtois and suddenly an army appeared in his midst that turned out to be alone and Militão running towards him in a turtle formation and with the speed of a Wild dog. And Thibaut Courtois finished it twenty minutes later with an inexplicable stop for which there are no repetitions in the world that can make her understand; It was a book goal for Chelsea just after the 1-0 draw, and when all the English players were celebrating with their fans, one on top of the other, even lifting chairs, Courtois put out two hands with one to go and changed the score (the luminous , what would the classics say). Chelsea accused the blow; It was as if the goal had been disallowed. Courtois did VAR.

That was the miraculous Madrid, remains of the surviving Madrid that finds boots and gloves where another team only has war wounds; They were just two plays: the other miracles did not come off the bench last night. The rest was an electric and hilarious show, genuinely European, pure Champions at the Bernabeu on a Wednesday night. Madrid made the ball run fast, very fast, between short and fast combinations in the three quarters that ended up shrinking Chelsea around Kepa. Carvajal played everything because Madrid in the Champions League is that: that the coach tells the right-back in the quarterfinals to play where it suits him best, that life is short and you have to make the most of it, that the important thing is to be healthy and that there are already 14 Champions here, now the priority is that Carvajal have a good time on the field and the team plays for him in a happy way on your day. So Carvajal found himself a midfielder at some point in the game and raised an excellent ball for Vinicius, who put his body between the ball and the defender as if it were a bollard, and got an impossible shot that he ended up scoring with Benzema’s leg.

The night was already heated. She grew hotter when the attack didn’t stop. Vinicius treated himself to another of those nights three years ago who else and who least thought that he was going to give them away at the Lula Club. There is no case: he is a player who smells of time, very past revolutions and physique, with a speed of a young century (“you don’t train that, you have it or you don’t have it”, Garci once said) and absolute confidence in the promises of life; if Gatsby saw the lost beloved in the green light of the pier, Vinicius sees a terrified defender asking for help as if an iceberg was coming at full speed ready to open leaks everywhere. He opened them until boring, supported behind by some colossal Kroos, Valverde and Modric; he opened them to search and find Benzema. He finally opened them to come face to face with Asensio, to whom he gave a bomb that Madrid’s 11 telegraphed to the net anesthetized to leave a 2-0 that he tasted good, but so good.

Chelsea went on to play with ten because Rodrygo, very smart, made a mess of Cucurella, just out on the field, and stood alone about to enter the area. A blue arm stopped him; It was a foul and an expulsion, and in that shot that a specialist threw, many old fans thought of Roberto Carlos. Follow the canvas in the southern end of the Bernabeu: what would Roberto do with fouls like that? Probably destroy the new stadium and start building a new one himself. He was not the only bald man the Bernabeu remembered. The match ended with Ancelotti showing off with a control mark of the house of another bald man, this Frenchman. Carlo deserved it: control, in every way, and victory.

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