A thrilling finale left honours even but Valencia on their knees after the Real goalkeeper headed upfield and caused mayhem
“I’m two metres tall; that frightens people,” Thibaut Courtois said. It was late, it was loud and he had nothing to lose, so there he was: Real Madrid’s goalkeeper, up the other end, running into the Valencia penalty area for one last shot at saving this, the fear he said his opponents felt about to become real. “It was his idea,” Zinedine Zidane admitted, and it was an idea that had been going around his head since the moment Carlos Soler had given Valencia the lead with 12 minutes left on Sunday night. “I thought: shit, the game’s escaping us, I have to stop everything until the 94th minute, then maybe there will be a corner,” Courtois explained. He’d just stopped Valencia getting a second. Now the clock said 94:23 and there was a corner.
The next thing they knew, Courtois was jumping through a crowd heading goalwards, the ball rebounding into the six-yard box, hearts stopping, and Karim Benzema was sprinting off, teammates running after him laughing, the ball in the net. “That’s Real Madrid,” Zidane said but this was silly, even for them. Courtois chased too, a long black latex finger raised. “What a header!” they kept telling him. Federico Valverde slipped to his knees, pumped his fists and beat the floor. On the touchline, Zidane shouted then got lost in his own smile as the world went wild around him. When the Belgian got back to his own goal, a hundred metres away, he cupped his hands to his ears and blew Valencia’s fans a kiss. Like their team, they had been broken. “I don’t know what happened,” Soler said moments later.
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“Bordalás, I love you,” the Getafe fans sang as their team defeated Valladolid 2-0, their fifth consecutive game without conceding, to move into fourth. Yes, Getafe are back in a Champions League place. And while it’s not new any more – it happened last season, when they got very, very close, only to lose out to Valencia on the final day, it’s still amazing. Bordalás took over with Getafe in trouble near the bottom. Of the second division. No wonder they’re serenading him. “I love them too,” he said, “very much.”
When the final whistle went on Real Sociedad v Barcelona on Saturday evening, everyone inside Anoeta stood to applaud, clapping so loud that it sounded like they would make their hands bleed. Down on the pitch, the players embraced. The talk would be of penalties – the one Real Sociedad got and the one that Barcelona didn’t – and it would get increasingly petty, pretty pathetic in fact, but right then, right there, the feeling was different.
No one had won, either of them could have, and everyone enjoyed this. Goals from Mikel Oyarzabal, Antoine Griezmann, Luis Suárez and Alexander Isak had seen it finish 2-2. It had been fun while it lasted, and it had lasted until the very end, Gerard Piqué diving for the final opportunity deep in added time. That was when he appealed that he had been pulled back by Diego Llorente, although the Real Sociedad defender approached him, repeating: “You pulled me on to you”.
Asked what he thought, Ernesto Valverde said: “What am I going to say? We have our team shirts on: I’ll say theirs wasn’t and ours was and their manager will come here and say the opposite.” That though, didn’t set the tone, and so on it ran. Which was a pity, because the game had been so much fun. Martin Ødegaard in particular was wonderful, while Griezmann dinked in a lovely goal against the former club where they still like him – and he didn’t celebrate. “It had a bit of everything,” Valverde said. “It was a great game,” Imanol Alguacil said. He looked exhausted and he wasn’t the only one.
Alavés 1-1 Leganés, Athletic 0-0 Eibar, Atlético Madrid 2-0 Osasuna, Celta Vigo 2-2 Mallorca, Espanyol 2-2 Real Betis, Getafe 2-0 Real Valladolid, Granada 1-2 Levante, Real Sociedad 2-2 Barcelona, Sevilla 1-2 Villarreal, Valencia 1-1 Real Madrid
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