Keeper has saved Real Madrid at crucial times in Champions League campaign but believes role is harder than it wasAt the end of Tuesday’s session as Real Madrid began preparations for the Champions League final, a group of players gathered at one end of Valdebebas training ground and took turns rattling off shots, cheering the best and laughing at the worst. Standing in their way, also rotating, were three goalkeepers but Thibaut Courtois was not among them and maybe it was better that way. This is the man Carlo Ancelotti told to ease off in training for the good the team, joking: “I say to him: ‘You have to give our forwards more confidence because you always save every shot...
As four pre-final defeats highlight, City’s mechanism is so complex that when it misfires it cannot easily be put rightAt what point does just one of those things become more than just one of those things? If Manchester City’s defeat to Real Madrid on Wednesday night were a one-off, it could be written off. What can you do about luck like that? If you have nine shots on target to the opposition’s none in the first 90 minutes and still lose 2-1 what, really, have you done wrong? Especially when you’ve dominated the first leg as City had done.But this keeps happening. Season after season, Pep Guardiola finds his teams dominating Champions League ties and losing. Bad luck follows him:...
Manchester City were the more coherent team but the white noise and white light of the Bernabéu was decisive in semi-finalWhen the moment came it seemed to strike Daniele Orsato like a surge of static energy. The referee had been phlegmatic at the Bernabéu. He shrugged. He jogged. But this place does something to you. As Karim Benzema fell, ankle tapped by a lunge from Rúben Dias, even before his body hit the turf Orsato’s arm was springing out from his side, ramrod straight, possessed with the voodoo of another of these absurd electrical storms, these nights of white noise, white light, where nothing is ever done until it’s done.Benzema stepped up and rolled the penalty kick into the empty...
Villarreal dominated half of the Champions League semi-final second leg but Reds found way to make it to Paris showpieceLuis Díaz revved the engine, priming the afterburners. He blazed up the left, taking Juan Foyth, the Villarreal right-back, with him. He slowed and then he went again, purring away from him. The Liverpool winger had just entered as a half-time substitute in his team’s Champions League semi-final, second leg at the Estadio de la Cerámica and he was testing his marker, working out whether he had the beating of him. The answer was emphatic. He did.Díaz knew it. So did everyone and, as Liverpool set about starting Tuesday night’s tie – albeit 45 minutes late – it felt as though...
Villarreal’s fans were starting to dream of Paris but the introduction of Luis Díaz changed the game“You suffer and then ...”, Jürgen Klopp clicked his fingers: “... you react.”It may not have been quite that simple, nor quite so instantaneous, and it certainly wasn’t as effortless as that, but as it turned out Liverpool’s manager wasn’t far off in his prediction. Continue reading...