There are two Real Madrid. The first is average. The second is irresistible. This season, Carlo Ancelotti’s men have presented two faces in surprising proportions. In the first half, they scored six goals and conceded five. In the second acts, they scored sixteen goals and kept a clean sheet. From 6-5 to 16-0, from any team to a steamroller, for an impressive result: eight wins in eight matches.
Sometimes, it was at the very end of the meeting that the White House made the difference. Karim Benzema’s double against Espanyol was an illustration of this, during the third day of La Liga, before Madrid’s success against Leipzig on Wednesday was in this vein. Sometimes it’s more generally the second half of Real’s score that came close to perfection. The big victory on the lawn of Celtic (0-3), at the start of the defending champion’s C1 campaign, was of this ilk.
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“The second period was an exhibition”
Ancelotti even said he was amazed by the second part of his team’s performance, in Glasgow, on September 6th. “The second half was an exhibition. We didn’t concede, but I especially remember the way we played. We kept the ball and when we had space we used it brilliantly“, savored He Mister. A goal synthesized this mastery of the debates. The third of the match, the work of Eden Hazard. Or rather that of a collective.
Thirty-three passes led to the achievement of the Belgian, which put an end to the suspense at the start of the last quarter of an hour. Suspense that Real therefore tends to spare. After this symbolic success at the start of the season for his players, Ancelotti did not blame them for this chronic inability to start strong. He also analyzed it differently:I can’t be angry, you have to know how to suffer against Celtic, in this atmosphere, and my team knows how to do it.”
Unsinkable like last season
Behind this optimistic speech, persists the question of a difference in level between Real Madrid of the first forty-five minutes and that of the following. While the “Merengue” had never completed a first act without shooting the slightest shot, at home in the Champions League, between 2003-04 and 2022, they have just done it three times in a row. Against Chelsea (quarter-final), Manchester City (semi-final) and Leipzig (group stage). Worrying, for a European giant?
But from impotence to tranquility, there is only one step, which Real crosses according to its successful second periods. To the point of making it a trademark. The impression that nothing can happen to him, that he can stammer his football or just resist before delivering the coup de grace, in a repetition of scenarios that sweeps away the thesis of serendipity. In 2022-23, he continues that “magic” that surrounded his path to a fourteenth big-eared cup.
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Because this 16-0, posted after the break, is likely to give Real players the absolute conviction that they will always be able to turn a game around. A feeling cultivated from last season which is perhaps even more expressed against their rival on Sunday. In the minds of “merengue” supporters, at least, in the light of the memory of a 2014 Champions League final that Sergio Ramos had stamped with the seal of this fantastic invulnerability, with a whim that has become legendary .
Vinicius Jr. (Real Madrid)
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