When Real Madrid coach, Alberto Toril, appeared on November 12 in the press room of the Alfredo di Stéfano stadium, he stated that the team had taken a firm step forward this season and predicted that it would soon be very close to winning. his first title. Two and a half months after those words, White faces Barcelona this Sunday (12.00, La2) in Butarque with the Super Cup at stake, the second final in their brief history after the one they lost in 2023 against Atlético in the Copa de the Queen on the same stage where tomorrow they will face their worst rival. Barça, the team that rules in football played by women in Europe and that has not lost in Spain with a trophy at stake since January 2021, has won each and every one of the 15 matches against Madrid since president Florentino Pérez founded the section in the summer of 2020.
The Barça hegemony has taken its toll on a team that this season has taken a step forward after its star, Caroline Weir, recovered from the torn ligament that kept her in the infirmary almost all of last year and after the signings of players internationals that have raised the competitive level of the squad. Madrid will play its second quarterfinal in the Champions League in March, in the League it has settled into second position with a good cushion of points over third and in the group stage of the Champions League it was familiar with Chelsea, one of the teams called to fight for the tournament. That leap in level, however, has not yet been reflected against Barcelona, against whom Real has to overcome a football and psychological gap due to the weight of the 15 antecedents.
One of the hardest blows was the last one, a 0-4 in the League in November when expectations about the team’s good start invited us to imagine a much more closely contested match. “Our improvement also involves the mental aspect. Every day we are more competitive. With Barça there have been many games where we have been really good, and others we have not been so good. We are ready for tomorrow. We have tried to recover the players well, we have the right energy, so we will surely make it difficult for them,” Toril anticipated this Saturday at the press conference.
The Andalusian coach expects a very different match from the one that took place in November in the League, where everything that could go wrong for Madrid went wrong since Patri Guijarro’s early goal that conditioned the clash. Real only generated 0.4 expected goals – an advanced statistic that measures scoring opportunities based on the quality of the occasion – when their average per game in the domestic competition is 2.4 and in the Champions League it reaches 2. 3, according to Opta records. He also did not have the personality to keep the ball against the most dominant rival on the continent. The team was left with 27% possession, well below its data in the League (59%) and in Europe (56%), unable to combine in the face of the suffocating forward pressure that Barcelona practices. The four-time Barça champions – they won the Super Cup, Cup, League and Champions League last year – generate an average of 3.9 expected goals in the regular tournament and 3 in the Champions League, in addition to keeping the ball 75% of the time and 77% , respectively.
Madrid, which will not be able to count on a key piece like the German midfielder Melanie Leupolz after breaking the internal lateral ligament in her right knee in the semifinals against Real Sociedad, needs this Sunday for its data to be more similar to what it usually has than those he registered in November in the victory that Barça gave him. “We are ready. We have played games against Barcelona many times and the mentality is very important. We know what they are capable of, that they have special players, but so do we. We believe in ourselves and we have confidence. I feel like tomorrow will be a different type of game,” Weir said today at the press conference.
Toril, who has the young Colombian Linda Caicedo in very good shape, also sent a message in which he stressed the determination that his players must have to once and for all break down the mental wall that comes with competing and scratching something against the Barcelona: “What I always tell them: that they have personality, character, that they come out loose, confident in their potential and that it be us. We don’t have to modify anything at all, we have to play with our virtues; and if they beat us because they are better, we will congratulate them.”
