Monday, October 21, 2024, 17:04
Almost five months after crossing swords in the Champions League final played on June 1 at Wembley, Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund meet again in the top continental competition. They do so with very different states of mind from those with which they left the home of English football. The whites, winners in London but erratic since this season’s curtain rose, need to right the course in their fetish competition after the unexpected defeat suffered three weeks ago in Lille. The Aurinegros, defeated on the banks of the Thames, however now enjoy a privileged position at the top of the new league thanks to the defeats they inflicted on Bruges and Celtic in the first two days. Wind in full sail in Europe after former Real Madrid player Nuri Sahin took over from Edic Terzic on the bench, the Rhineland team visits the Santiago Bernabéu this Tuesday with their guard up against an injured champion.
The setback at the hands of Lille buried a streak of fourteen consecutive games without defeat in Europe by Real Madrid. The whites, who last season raised the ‘orejona’ without bending the knee once, slipped on their trip to French lands at the beginning of October, leaving bad feelings that they have not been able to redress since then. On the contrary, the tactical gibberish they offered last Saturday against Celta intensified the concern around a squad that cannot find its way. Although the results, much superior to the game displayed, sustain them in the League, they need to take a step forward in the Champions League, where they will have to face Dortmund, Milan and Liverpool consecutively, the three most demanding rivals they have in store. the draw at this stage.
The intimidating capacity of the Bernabéu plays in favor of Carlo Ancelotti’s team, a venue that has not been assaulted by any visitor in Europe since Chelsea dominated it in that second leg of the 21-22 quarterfinals that it came to fuel. the most magical Champions League legend in memory thanks to Rodrygo and Benzema’s final goals that prevented the Blues from turning around a tie that seemed to have been resolved at Stamford Bridge. Since that date, the merengue coliseum has seen eleven victories and three draws for the hosts, who are also clinging to the gunpowder of Mbappé and Vinicius to keep going while they reprogram the system.
The Brazilian is preparing to play his last game in Europe before next Monday he presumably collects a Ballon d’Or that is still in the Frenchman’s sights. The latter found the net in his debut as a Real Madrid player in the Champions League, scoring a goal in his team’s long-suffering victory against Stuttgart, but he played poorly in Lille and Real Madrid suffered. After destroying Celta last Saturday with a missile, Mbappé is targeting Dortmund in a dispute in which Ancelotti will predictably once again opt for four midfielders and will abandon the experiment of three centre-backs that turned out to be unsuccessful in Balaídos. If so, the big victim in the eleven would once again be Rodrygo, who has not started for Real Madrid since the controversial derby held at the Metropolitano.
Devastated by casualties
On the other side of the equation will appear a group that is not anything to write home about either. Dortmund’s overwhelming success in Europe, based, it must be said, on two overwhelming performances against low-calibre rivals, contrasts with its lackluster situation in the Bundesliga. Seventh classified, four points from a lead shared by Bayern and Leipzig, the team led by Nuri Sahin has just won last Friday by the minimum against the modest St. Pauli, but blames a very tough defeat against Stuttgart and another no less painful against the Union Berlin.
Sahin, Terzic’s assistant last season and a failed signing at the time for a Real Madrid team with which he was barely able to play ten games under José Mourinho in the 2011-12 campaign, continues trying to grease a squad that lost in the summer to outstanding figures such as Füllkrug, Hummels or Reus, but which was well reinforced with the arrivals of Anton, Beier or Guirassy.
The latter, scorer of 30 goals in as many games the previous year with Stuttgart, has already scored seven goals in the same number of games with Dortmund, three of them in the Champions League, and will lead a team at the Bernabéu that arrives devastated for the casualties. Adeyemi, Reyna, Duranville and Couto will miss a match in which Dortmund seeks revenge and Real Madrid seeks to breathe before the classic.
-Probable alignments:
Real Madrid: Courtois, Lucas Vázquez, Militao, Rüdiger, Mendy, Bellingham, Valverde, Camavinga, Modric, Mbappé and Vinicius.
Borussia Dortmund: Kobel, Ryerson, Anton, Schlotterbeck, Bensebaini, Gross, Emre Can, Malen, Brandt, Gittens and Guirassy.
Referee: Istvan Kovacs (Romania).
Time: 9:00 p.m.
Stadium: Santiago Bernabéu.
TV: Movistar Champions League.
