Harmony has broken out on and off the pitch, so much so that their coach referred to Sunday’s 2-2 draw at the Bernabéu as a ‘lovely spectacle’“Every time you looked left and the men in white attacked, you thought: ‘We could lose this,’” said the Valencia coach, Marcelino García Toral. “But every time you looked right, my good side, and we attacked, there were real chances to score.” So Marcelino looked left, right and back again while behind him everyone in the Santiago Bernabéu stand did the same, accelerating to the end. Left, where Neto pushed Karim Benzema’s header against the post on 92.38; right, where Simone Zaza wriggled into the area on 93.22, the winner there before him until,...
Real Madrid’s coach does not say much but when he does people listen, and his second Champions League win underlined how attuned he is to his playersOn his 20th Champions League night, Zinédine Zidane left with his second European Cup – as many as Pep Guardiola, José Mourinho or Sir Alex Ferguson. It was way after midnight by the time Sergio Ramos carried it out of Cardiff and Zidane had already departed, slipping away quietly, pausing only to embrace the Juventus manager, Massimiliano Allegri, as he went. As the Real Madrid players paraded the trophy around the pitch Zidane had stood aside with his wife, watching them, a fond look on his face. “The key is that they get on...
Zinedine Zidane came up with a plan in August to protect his star man for the vital games and Ronaldo delivered with two goals in the Champions League finalJust when you thought it might be all about the man it’s never about, it was about the man it’s always about. In the buildup to this final, Casemiro had insisted that he’s there to “plug holes”, claiming that it is robbing the ball, not scoring goals, that brings him pleasure, and yet he had just reached a higher plane, thumping in the shot that put Real Madrid back into the lead and looked set to bring the night in Cardiff to a close. Three minutes later, though, another man stepped centre-stage....
Madrid have won La Liga only once in the past eight years but victory over Barcelona at the Camp Nou would put them nine points clear of their rivalsZidane scored for Real Madrid this week – Enzo Zidane, that is. Just when his dad thought things could not get any better, the 21-year-old got a goal on his debut – 17 minutes after he walked on to the Bernabéu pitch and a decade after his father last walked off it.It is 3,861 days since Zinedine was a Madrid player; 333 days since he became the Madrid manager and he is already a European Champion, a European Super Cup champion and a very proud parent. Win on Saturday afternoon and the...