Growing up is always a betrayal, among other things, because one is then very clear about the difference between good and evil; Then, over time, things change so much that the good of yesterday, being the same, is the bad now, but we no longer have any idea of anything and it is better for us. “In Spain there are textbooks that present a story of good and bad”, I have written down this reflection that I read months ago; of course, and in Germany. Harlan Coben has a brilliant quote about this because he brings the difference between good and evil to sports, specifically baseball and its foul line. A line so thin and made of something as easy to remove as lime. “If you cross it, it really starts to blur where fair becomes dirty and dirty becomes fair,” he says. Ah, justice. We do not know where good is, and we are going to know where fair is.
Football, like faith, offers some holds that are immune to the erosion of the years. One is so simple that it suffocates: the ball must always be given to the good guy. The good person does not have to be the best, but rather the one who makes everyone better. Sometimes the good is the best, like Maradona. In today’s Madrid it can be argued who is the best, but there is no doubt about the one who makes everyone better: it is Jude Bellingham. Bellingham in the absence of Güler having more minutes, because the Turk plays football as if he had not done anything else since he was born. With Bellingham in a logical position, not Martian like the ones it has been occupying in Madrid’s worst games, with Mbappé very plugged in on the left and with Güler threatening from the right, Madrid won the game in the first 45 minutes in Butarque. That and thanks to the agitation of Vinicius (intuitive and fierce in recovering the ball that Bellingham started for the first goal), with whom you have to continue talking like with little children; beyond paripé, let’s get into pragmatic mode: do you really not know that the fields are full of cameras, and that if an opponent hits him in the chest and he throws himself with his hands in his face there will be no card, because there is VAR , and will also have terrible Ballon d’Or voting journalists in front of the TV taking notes?
Madrid’s last two games after the home defeat against Milan leave an air of nostalgia. What could have happened to that match with a different attitude and a certain warlike spirit, not the reluctance exhibited after the resounding 0-4 against Barcelona. When a team brings together so many stars and a coach capable of organizing them (and this has not always been the case, you will have to see the injuries or the eternal waits for changes), the only thing it needs is to find a state of mind. Madrid has not had it this season because mental issues have been so violently subordinated to vertigo that suddenly, in momentous matches, it has mortgaged the result in the expectation of an unthinkable heroic. That and aim, a traditional niche of merengue results when the midfield plays broken. Inconstant, tremendous when he corners the ball or goes out on the counterattack, very strong in defense against Osasuna and Leganés but a flair against Milan and Barça, Madrid appears at Anfield, scene of a last legendary victory (that 2-5), with few cards in hand, but perhaps decisive cards.
