Real Madrid need a comeback at the Bernabéu against Manchester City

“Pleased, but not getting carried away,” I heard Luis Aragonés say once. That’s what I saw last night on the tv on the faces of Real Madrid’s Benzema, Vinicius and Ancelotti, aware they’d lost to Manchester City 4-3. Conceding four goals is an issue. Scoring three compensates, but only in part. I’d almost go as far to say that defensive lapses played their part in all the seven goals we saw in the game, but for Madrid’s three the main element was the excellence of their fine strikers, Benzema and Vinicius. The Frenchman caught a cross from Mendy on the fly to put it in off the inside of the post for the first and scored a ‘Panenka’ penalty for the third. Between those two, Vinicius scored the second with a stunning run.

Madrid have Benzema and Vinicius to thank

Two sensational strikers. Thanks to them Madrid came away from a difficult ground with a decent result. They’d come into the game with just one player missing, but an important one: Casemiro. His absence makes it clear he can cover spaces Kroos can’t. Madrid’s defense played as if exposed to a cold Manchester wind without the protective scarf of Casemiro and made things all too easy for City for each of their goals. The clearest example was the fourth, when after a foul from Kroos the entire defence stopped, the German included, waiting for the referee’s whistle. It never came and Bernardo Silva blasted home. It was the clearest mistake, maybe the biggest, but not the only one. In each City goal there was something the defense or Courtois could have done.

Guardiola knows the Bernabéu awaits

It was interesting to hear Guardiola at the end. He’d won the game, but was notably terse, responding in monosyllables, almost impolite. He knows the 4-3 leaves the final word for the Bernabéu, that Jupiter Tonans, or Thundering Jove, whose embrace so many have been crushed by. It will be some game, no doubt of it, just like yesterday’s and as will be the one tonight in Liverpool, with Klopp’s side hosting Villarreal, the best side in Europe in terms of value for money, if you’ll allow me to use that metric. That’s the second of the four matches making up the Champions League semifinals, European soccer’s biggest spectacle.