On May 17, 2023, Manchester City put Real Madrid in the Champions League semifinals: 4-0. Only then, the whites could not escape burning. Of the 13 European qualifiers that have played in the last three and a half seasons, in which Carlo Ancelotti has scratched two champions of champions, up to 10 occasions came out winners after an exercise of funambulism that, put all the episodes one behind the other, does not stop calling attention. This Wednesday, in the Metropolitan, they added another notch to the collection.
The chronology of this survival displacing is very long. In the eighths of the 21-22, Benzema resurrected a dead man at Mbappé’s stunned look. In Cuartos, Chelsea was not enough with a 0-3 in the absence of a quarter of an hour (1-3 in the first leg) because the exterior of Modric appeared. In the semifinals, in the 90th minute, whites needed two goals to the City to force the extension and almost have time left time for the total comeback. And in the final with Liverpool, Courtois left the greatest exhibition remembered from a goalkeeper in an appointment of this size.
In the eighths of the 22-23, it fell 2-0 in Anfield in the first quarter of an hour and ended 2-5. That course stayed there, but in the next one he made full. Before the Leipzig, the Bernabéu stood with nails in the eighth because the team bordered the total incident despite Germany. In rooms, in the Etihad, the mother of all resistances: 33 shots received. In semifinals, in 88, Madrid was eliminated, until Joselu Mato centrifuged Bayern. And in the final, the Dortmund forgave his life in the first half. “We are a overcoming machine,” Modric said on Wednesday.
That unappealable defeat against Citizen In 2023, and its lazy victories in front of Chelsea at the previous crossing and the most recent against the Pep Guardiola squad are the exceptions of this series of whites in the Champions League gorge.
(Almost) there is always an exit for Madrid, which, sometimes, in this permanent balance in Europe adds a paradoxical, and even confusing element: it seems that it is virtually eliminated by the difficulties it is going through, but no. It happened to him in the Metropolitan. Despite all his hardships, he was not out of a single minute. “Sometimes,” Anncelotti explained on Wednesday, “it seemed that we needed to mark because we were eliminated, but we have never been. We were matched, ”said the coach, who at the break asked his players that, above all, they would seek control of the game through possession, without risks, to avoid a second goal against.
A TROMPICONS COURSE
This tradition of Madrid in the Champions League has been repeated in the last four campaigns outside the moment of play that the team has crossed. But this course links well with its domestic season. His football does not amazed, but he doesn’t sink either. Since August, he does not stop doing the rubber. “We have to improve the game,” Thibaut Courtois granted at midnight from the metropolitan.
In November, the first important crisis exploded, also punished for injuries, and Carletto feared not to eat “the nougat”, as later admitted, but contained damage and reached revitalized Christmas. Barcelona dubbed him again in the Super Cup final (2-5), the coach made the nth lustee to commitment and, again, avoided collapse. They rearmed against the City, but they returned to the traded in the Villamarín in the League and escaped alive against Atlético, to which they forgave the 3-1 in the first leg discount, they fit in the return in the second 28 (“we left as if the game was already won”, Valverde complained), and Vini erred a penalty. From Brazilian and Mbappé have seen much better nights. However, it was not enough land on top, also for a very unusual circumstance: that the opponent fails a penalty in the batch because it gives two touches. “Luck you believe it,” Curtois claimed.
After seven months of competition, Madrid advances to trompicones, living up to date and with few certainties in their game, but in Europe he grabs his routine. At the moment, your calendar remains at maximum. Add 47 shocks, all possible at this point in the course and now the doubt is to what extent it will be able to make its European fascination with league obligations, two worlds that have not always been able to combine. A week ago, Ancelotti already warned that the excesses of Wednesdays are paid over the weekend. This Saturday, Madrid goes to Vila-Real with less than three days of rest, but after another survival exercise in Champions.
