WEEKEND 11 IN LA LIGA WRAPPED UP AND A SHORT TRANSCRIPT OF THE MADRID SECTION ⬇️
(17th) RACING 0-3 MADRID (3rd)
GOLES: MBappé, Bellingham, Diomande
Racing truly didn’t lay a glove on Madrid in this completely one-sided contest.
But I think there is a point to be made - even with seven months of the season remaining - about the general state of Real Madrid under José Mourinho - beyond the fact that this win ensures that the top of the table is a nice three-way punch-up.
For the last two seasons at least, this squad has looked ungovernable.
The last year of the great Carlo Ancelotti in charge looked flat, uncompetitive and self-indulgent.
The year which was split between Xabi Alonso and Álvaro Arbeloa was nothing better than a Punch-and-Judy show.
Three very different leaders.
The first an exceptional man-manager and serial winner.
The second a highly technical and intense football coach.
And the third - an angular, idiosyncratic man yet somebody who most certainly appears to have coaching talent.
But one, continuous player response: ‘We know better!’
The players thought they knew better in terms of pitch-positions, playing-styles, level of intensity, attention to detail in video preparation, training ground atmosphere, social lives: everything.
The result was that Madrid only played arrestingly and impressively in brief bursts.
The rest of the time the team looked disjointed on the pitch, were easy to supersede athletically, and got pushed around domestically and in Europe.
Even though when ESPN asked all its writers to tip this season’s champions and I was in the tiny minority of one, perhaps two if my memory is faulty, who thought that Mourinho could lead them to the top of the table and keep them thrre….. there WAS a point in the early part of this term when the combined effect of how well Barcelona was playing and how ragged Madrid’s state of fitness was, when the tip looked as if it would fall far short.
There are still seven months to go.
This is not me bragging – not for a millisecond.
However what I think is worth communicating, now, is a taking of the pulse.
Madrid are training and playing with the kind of resolute, unified, confident, happy, snarling hunger which is what champion teams are made of.
The level of football quality might still still be a tad intermittent - but you can look at every single footballer and immediately see that they’re silhouette is lean, several of them have shed kilos.
The intensity is there athletically, but it is also there in terms of playing for one another.
The imperfections which remain, and there are some, are being covered up by a huge ‘all-for one-and-one-for-all’ feeling whenever they take the pitch.
I use the word bullying in a non-pejorative sense – but they bully teams. They disrupt them, they harass them, they chase them, they run past them, and within increasing regularity their capable of extraordinary transitions.
On several occasions this season they’ve gone from their own penalty box to the other end of the pitch and scored within 14 or 15 seconds. Rivals fucking hate that….and fear it.
On Sunday up in Santander 11 seconds passed from Dean Huijsen being a little isolated in his own defensive left corner to Jude Bellingham scoring the goal which clinched the points.
Anyway, my idea is try to make you think about the difference between what we’ve seen from the men in white shirts over the last two-and-a-half seasons to what we’re seeing now.
They are contenders – domestically and in Europe. Right now, I reckon, that’s a fact.
So it needs spotlighting, it needs a certain degree of praise, and it will need lots of people to reassess what they think of Mourinho and his squad.
Of course there were stand-out moments on Sunday afternoon up in Cantabria.
First of all the joke penalty. It’s appalling that the referee got this so wrong and then VAR felt that the rules did not allow them to intervene because there was the lightest of contacts between Matteo Prati and Mbappé.
This wasn’t a penalty, it wasn’t even close, the Frenchman should’ve been booked for diving – but it stood, he scored and Madrid, at one up were about 80% home.
Bellingham‘s thunderous running on to Güler’s assist pass got that second, then the hidden star of the show, Diomande, scored an absolute rocket – he doesn’t seem to score any other kind of goal – and he’s making the absence of Vinicius currently look completely digestible.
Arda Güler ‘showed’ again, Alexander Arnold looked fully fit and sharp and important for the first time since he arrived at Madrid. He played well – Courtois made another wonder-save…..just like Lunin did last week in the Belgian’s absence.
Everything is clicking.
And, just for extra value, there’s a point of dark humour too.
Do you remember when after beating Seville at the Bernabéu, Mourinho commented that he could not decide whether Güler, should have been sent off or not because there wasn’t a good TV angle on the alleged offence.
The Portuguese added: “if a referee ever favours us then I’ll have absolutely no problem about admitting it in public – but that’s very unlikely because it goes against the trend of how people referee against us!”
Post-match, savouring an unpalatable defeat, the Racing manager José Alberto López said: “I seem to remember Mourinho saying that he wouldn’t have any problem admitting when the referee favoured him?”
It was left hanging, it was sardonic, it was neatly done, but it was the only body blow that Racing landed on Madrid all afternoon.
It’s November but Los Blancos are on the march.
