Luka Modric’s departure from England felt insufficiently mourned, yet his performance against Atlético marked him out again as the world’s best midfielder
Then there were two. On Tuesday night inside the giant shiny-plated Armadillo that is the Juventus Stadium, as the lights dazzled and thrillingly loud American brat-rock split a hole in the sky, 10,000 Italians held up 10,000 plastic cards to spell the word “Cardiff” in vast shimmery letters. This is, in all likelihood, the first time this has ever happened, and probably the last too.
A day later in Madrid as thunderstorms cleared the streets after midnight people in the city centre bars could be heard yelling and chanting and, in one side street off the Calle de Toledo, singing with a thick, beery Spanish inflection about Cardiff.
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A player so skilled and diligent, he makes every other component in that superstar collective function a little better
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