Madrid
Updated:18/01/2022 01:01h
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After the halfway point of the season, Madrid looks forward to the next four months of competition with hope, optimism and ambition. The Spanish Super Cup does nothing more than offer the cup to the fans next Sunday at the Bernabeu, before the match was played, the League match against Elche, but the residue it has left is an absolute aftertaste. After years and a half without adding weight to the showcases, and in a complex social and economic context due to the harshness of the pandemic, the trophy, no matter how small, tastes like glory. This was reflected during the celebration, closer to a Champions League final than a Super Cup. The coronavirus has taught that moments of success and happiness must be squeezed to the fullest, and Madrid did that yesterday in all its levels: board of directors, coaching staff and players.
The white team came out of Arabia very strengthened, but above all the figure of Ancelotti, one of the characters in this sport with the greatest professional and personal wealth. A calm man who never has a high tone, and if so, it happens at extreme moments but always within the privacy of the locker room, sacred to the Italian coach. Such is the union and the good vibes that it gives off that even ‘sentenced’ players like Marcelo or Isco surrender to his way of managing the group and transmitting his knowledge and leadership: “He should never have left,” say the most veterans in the locker room, happy for his return as Modric confessed publicly on Sunday night in Riyadh: “Since his arrival he has given a lot of confidence, he has put a lot of faith in me and when you have someone like that supporting you, everything is much easier.
The Croatian is one of Ancelotti’s weaknesses, to the point that the Italian blames his departure from Madrid in 2015, for finishing the season without winning any major title, on the two serious injuries suffered by the Croatian in that campaign. First, a rupture of the proximal tendon of the left rectus femoris, which kept him out for four months between November 2014 and March 2015. A month later, in mid-April, he suffered a sprain of the medial collateral ligament of the right knee in the League match against Malaga, a mishap that left him out of the tough semifinal of the Champions League against Juventus, which the white club lost by a single goal, and the last six games of the domestic championship, a tournament that Madrid lost for only two points. He was also out when Atlético eliminated him in the round of 16 in the Cup. On Sunday night at the King Fahd Stadium, his hesitation to Modric for having missed a pass that preceded an affectionate and sincere hug between the two, shows the admiration and respect that exists between the two, which is just what happens with the rest of the squad: «You have missed a pass there, you missed a pass there. You’ve thrown the ball out and that’s it,” Carletto told him in a mocking tone.
“The players have no doubt that he is the perfect coach. It is not invasive, nothing more than in the tactical aspect where it is nice to see him stop training and repeat what he is after as many times as necessary. No one has found or heard of his ego. It does not exist”, they explain from Valdebebas, delighted with his return. His profile is ideal for a bench of the magnitude and peculiarity of Real Madrid. Far from relativizing anything, everything is important to him. In fact, and therein lies the enormous distance from the rest, is that for him it is enormously important not to grant importance to certain aspects of everyday life. That’s where his figure rises like a rocket. His brilliant sense of humor is another symptom of his intelligence. He’s like that sweet grandpa we’d all let take our kids to the park. And the impact of that personality is such that even the least sensitive player in the locker room perceives it.
Florentine, delighted
“This title means a lot. We have made some changes and we are ushering in a new era with a new coach who knows us very well. We are optimistic. We have found a new course: to win”, he reflected Florentine just after winning the Super Cup. The president had a good brown last summer after Zidane’s second fright. With Mourinho, Florentino already considered consumed the hard-handed stage on the merengue bench. His extensive experience in office tells him that technicians with a left hand are the ones who end up curdling and succeeding in Madrid. It happened with Ancelotti and then with Zidane, twice.
Now, the wish is that Zizou’s history with the Italian be repeated. In a bridge season waiting for the fireworks that Mbappé will bring, perhaps Haaland, and the premiere of the new Santiago Bernabéu, Ancelotti is laying the foundations for Real Madrid for the coming years with good football, peace, stateliness and, most importantly, titles. The best of the season arrives, and it does so with a sublime coach as Madrid’s silent leader.
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