Under the cold and humidity of the Scottish city of Hamilton, Madrid diligently overcame Celtic, a team that has not yet earned a point in the Champions League, to reach the final day of the group stage with the possibility for the first time in their short history of being in the quarterfinals as one of the four seeds, those who play the second leg under the shelter of their fans. Real did not suffer one bit tonight against an inferior team that was already eliminated from the Champions League and had only scored one goal. The victory on the artificial grass New Douglas Park field was clear as soon as Bruun hit a spectacular right foot from the edge of Daugherty’s right corner in the 30th minute. The Danish striker herself and Alba Redondo completed a victory with two headers that leaves those of Alberto Toril in a position to compete next Tuesday with Chelsea, one of the bogeymen of the tournament, for the first place in the group at the Alfredo di Stéfano stadium.
0
Kelsey Daugherty, Kelly Clark, Caitlin Hayes, Célya Barclais, Emma Lawton, Colette Cavanagh (Natalie Ross, min. 63), Morgan Cross (Jenny Smith, min. 74), Amy Gallacher (Mathilde Carstens, min. 89), Shannon McGregor , Lucy Ashworth-Clifford (Saoirse Noonan, min. 74) and Murphy Agnew (Hana Kerner, min. 75)
3
Misa, Oihane Hernández (Sheila García, min. 71), Rocío Gálvez, Olga Carmona, María Méndez, Naomie Feller (Caroline Møller, min. 83), Filippa Angeldahl (Teresa Abelleira, min. 83), Linda Caicedo, Sandie Toletti, Caroline Weir (Athenea del Castillo, min. 71) and Signe Bruun (Alba Round, min. 78)
Goals
0-1 min. 29: Signe Bruun. 0-2 min. 70: Signe Bruun. 0-3 min. 84: Alba Redondo
Referee Iuliana Elena Demetrescu
yellow cards
Colette Cavanagh (min. 36)
Madrid’s superiority turned the clash into a monologue. Almost the entire match was played in Celtic’s field while Misa, the white goalkeeper, had to apply only two shots and long balls from the Scots to which she resorted to recover possession and initiate the positional attack. Real’s attacks came mainly from the left wing, where the Colombian Linda Caicedo and Olga Carmona mixed in and where the talented Caroline Weir dropped in to participate in the combinations.
The coffee maker is a 19-year-old player with formidable conditions who grows every game. His overflow and his associations with Weir give Madrid a verticality with which they open doors that seemed closed to find spaces in low blocks. Caicedo stole the ball from Celtic and assisted Bruun to put Madrid ahead. The Danish striker, who has five goals in the four games she has played in the Champions League this season – the top scorer of the tournament with Bayern striker Pernille Harder – managed to take a very powerful shot with almost no space to set up her leg. A few seconds before the goal, the referee had annulled another by Weir for offside that could not be reviewed due to the absence of VAR and that the television images did not clarify.
Real got closer to Daugherty’s goal again and again without hitting the last touch on the net in the second half until Bruun headed in a Feller cross after a fantastic combination of 11 passes that began in Misa. A few minutes from the end, Alba Redondo, who had come on to replace the Dane, scored the third with another header.
Madrid’s fourth consecutive victory in the Champions League leaves the team with the option of fighting against Chelsea on Tuesday to advance to the quarterfinals for the first time, a round in which they have only been once. The blues They were knocked down at Stamford Bridge in October in a match in which Toril’s team competed but in which they were penalized for three individual errors. Two months later, Real will have the option to take revenge against a rival they have never beaten in their five meetings to date in Europe.
