And despite everything, Rayo lives, he has a pulse. While the conversation revolves around the brief future of the dilapidated Vallecas field, the heart of the southern neighborhood of Madrid, strategically abandoned by the board, the team, which also seemed to fall apart in recent weeks under Francisco’s command, still has breath left. . Still in their stadium, and very close to the classic time of the Vallecano midday matches, Rayo stopped Real Madrid, who arrived with the impulse to get the Champions League round of 16 on track in Leipzig and having swept Girona at the Bernabéu, his closest competitor for the title. But Ancelotti’s team encountered resistance from the fringe, revived by Íñigo Pérez, debutant on the bench after having served as Andoni Iraola’s assistant until last year. Together they built a bold and enjoyable team of which there are still traces, as Madrid confirmed in another complex afternoon in the neighborhood, where it ended with a crazy point and Carvajal was sent off after only 20 minutes on the field.
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Dimitrievski, Aridane, Luis Espino, Lejeune, Balliu, Isi (De Frutos, min. 56), Álvaro García (Sergio Camello, min. 81), Unai López (Kike, min. 63), Óscar Valentín, Trejo (Miguel Silva, min. 63) and De Tomás (Falcao, min. 81)
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Andriy Lunin, Nacho, Lucas Vázquez (Dani Carvajal, min. 75), Aurelien Tchouameni, Fran Garcia, Camavinga (Kroos, min. 70), Modric (Arda Guler, min. 86), Brahim Diaz (Rodrygo, min. 69) , Federico Valverde, Vinicius Junior and Joselu
Goals 0-1 min. 3: Joselu. 1-1 min. 27: From Thomas.
Referee Alejandro Muñiz Ruiz
Yellow cards Isi (min. 45), Balliu (min. 48), Camavinga (min. 61), De Tomás (min. 80), Álvaro García (min. 81) and Dani Carvajal (min. 92)
The date in Vallecas is never comfortable for them. It is a favorable place for pocketing. Also for dizziness and voltage drops. But this Madrid of emergencies and commitment had not gone to that this time. From the first hesitation what was born was not a stumble, although it was very close, but the beginning of the first burst of intensity with which Madrid threw themselves into the duel in Vallecas. Lunin gave a very committed pass to Camavinga, who lost sight of the ball when he turned. El Rayo, also revving up at the start, immediately returned it to the area, like in the old rock and roll days of Iraola. But there Trejo and Raúl de Tomás got tangled up and Madrid no longer hesitated. He released a chain flash at the first touch. Brahim threw Valverde down the wing, the Uruguayan spotted Joselu’s entry in the center, where he put it in, and the forward beat Dimitrievski. A blink. Not even three minutes had passed and Ancelotti’s team had already resolved what they did not achieve in the first round. Until that point, Rayo was the only one they had not been able to score.
The goal, awarded due to the VAR warning that the linesman had made a mistake when raising the flag, opened the floodgates to Real’s voracity. Far from going out to contemplate the landscape, they pressed from the beginning, pushed by Valverde, who covers a formidable extension of the field and also pushed the attack in the first half. Next to him this time had been Camavinga, who had his moment later, and Modric, who returned to the eleven and left a couple of inconsequential drops of essence. The Uruguayan’s energy was shared by Brahim, Joselu and Vinicius. The ball flew with precision and without rhetoric. They lost sight of it for a little while, but they recovered it where they had advanced the lines, so high up, to push again.
El Rayo couldn’t find the thread. He pursued unattainable opposites like ghosts. The goal had left them shocked, but they received no more scratches. However, it took them a while to make landfall. Until they found Álvaro García a couple of times, first from the right wing with a cross from Balliu, and then from the left, where Pacha Espino began to join him. From there came the spark that woke them up. They managed to get around the baseline and leave the ball behind for Trejo. The Argentine shot high, but the ball hit Camavinga’s right hand and the VAR caught it. Raúl de Tomás got Isi to let him take the penalty and scored his first goal in this League, his second of the season after one he scored against Yeclano in the Cup.
The goal revived them and opened their eyes to the exploration of that wing defended by Lucas Vázquez, who gave Carvajal a rest, and spent 75 hectic minutes in Vallecas. What Rayo showed in Íñigo Pérez’s debut on the bench did not correspond to his shaky trajectory in recent months. There is still something left of that purposeful team that left in June.
Madrid had a hard time recovering the ball. And it was at a different pace, far from the electricity that followed Joselu’s goal. He tried to quell the surge of Rayo by keeping the ball, but he also moved a little further away from Dimitrievski’s goal. Vinicius always faced endless distances when he started running, without much company when he managed to escape the surveillance of Balliu and Isi. The Brazilian continued to be a disconcerting machine for the rival, but Rayo managed to disconnect him from the rest of the Madrid circuit.
The most dangerous thing he managed to find was a distant free kick that Kroos took and that Dimitrievski managed to reach with a stretch.
Even with more ball he didn’t live peacefully. Tchouameni, central again, tried one of his dribbles to turn in the center of the field and stumbled in front of Álvaro García, who stole the ball from him and shot, but the Frenchman recovered in time and blocked the shot. Not only did Rayo hold on, but, like Rayo before, they introduced Falcao and Camello, two forwards, onto the field. Madrid could not go for the second without looking back over its shoulder, in what became the old neighborhood battle that is expected of Vallecas in good times. Real ended up frustrated, with some desperation, by a team that, with Pérez, is still alive.