Barcelona plays the pass like a tenth grader: diligently and conscientiously, running his finger along the page of the textbook and being afraid to do something wrong.
Real Madrid plays the pass like the author of this textbook, who came out of hard drinking. Sometimes with simple mistakes, but more often with insights and in general with the look of “the one, the sea is knee-deep.”
Real scored the first goal when Kroos was substituted for a foul – and substituted – but still managed to give a bonus thin pass.
Benzema’s canceled goal was invented by Modric when he gathered half a team around him and still got out and gave an accurate pass – because of this, it was so free on the opposite flank. Barcelona and Inter gave a super match. How it was?
On 56 minutes, Real Madrid made a tiki-taka in the opponent’s half of the field and passed for two minutes without a break – just an act of psychological dominance. This is a natural advantage of a team that has already established itself and proved everything to itself, over a team that needs to prove a lot. Can anything be countered this? Yes. The audacity of talent. But Pedri played poorly, Gavi and Fati remained on the bench, and Dembele was again on the left.
One of Xavi’s few notable shortcomings as a coach is that he himself has mild student syndrome. He also tries very hard to do everything right and avoids risky decisions. Well, maybe this is right, time will tell. But the maturity of Real can be countered by something else – their own maturity, if not team, then at least individual. Barcelona has such maturity, they bought it from Bayern in the summer. Just maturity let me down.
But the impudent youth after the substitutions created more poignancy than it had been in the previous 75 minutes. This a hint that you can be bolder.
