The situation
Madrid ended their tour of the West Coast with a blow to the table just before the dispute over the first title, the Super Cup against Eintracht . A more than solvent victory against a very reinforced Juventus with the signings. But this Madrid continues to be a seamless steamroller . At times he embroidered the game with an imperial Kroos and the spark of Benzema and Vinicius, which is still intact. He did not even lower the level after the carousel of changes after which Ancelotti sent a clear message: Hazard is his new substitute. Mayoral, Mariano and Latasa did not have minutes and you already know, like Odriozola, that they do not count for the coach. Instead,Ceballos and Asensio have had just enough opportunities during the tour to intuit that, if they bet on staying, they will end up having a relevant role… albeit a secondary one. Ancelotti has already written the script for Madrid. The film could not be more box office last season, the double, so there is no reason to unsettle a machine that works perfectly. The coach did not hesitate to air in the days before the match that his starting team is already done despite the two newcomers, Rüdiger and Tchouameni, who make the European champion better and more solid but who, from the start, cannot improve none of the pieces of a perfectly oiled team. Juventus, historic in Europe and now a white ally in the Super League project, was the perfect rival for this final test of the eleven Champions League heroes who will appear soon in Helsinki to add one more European Super Cup to the Bernabéu showcases.Allegri did not hide anything. Vlahovic had the first minutes of the preseason and along with him the other two great additions, the Torino center-back Bremer, for whom Juve has paid Torino 40 million, and Di María. Pogba did not appear due to injury . The game started this Madrid in which everyone knows his role by heart, surprising with an unexpected twist.
The details
Only ten seconds had elapsed when Benzema was already able to push the ball into the net in a rehearsed move that Kroos started with a long pass that deactivated, just by inches, the perfectly timed movement of the Italian defense. The German gave the best version of him, imperial in long and short game movements and full of physique. The transfers may not serve to clearly improve any position, but they do serve to make some starters even better. This is the case of Casemiro, without a doubt the most demanded due to the arrival of Tchouameni. Ancelotti has been pampering him in recent days and the Brazilian has responded, always the first to activate the pressure after a loss and fundamental, once again, to deactivate the rival game. But the staging of Madrid usually leaves two great protagonists and Los Angeles was no exception. Vinicius and Benzema always shine when they meet, electric, at the top. Everything in Madrid makes more sense when the ball passes through the boots of the next Ballon d’Or , capable of accelerating play while maintaining precision until it causes vertigo in rivals or doing the smartest thing at the right time. It happened like this in the 19th minute, when a lost ball ended up in Vinicius’s boots. Benzema’s perfect drag movement facilitated the Brazilian’s slalom to the kitchen. Danilo ended up knocking him down, panicked, and Benzema sufficiently converted the penalty. The security with which Real Madrid approaches the great teams in Europe one after another is beginning to be almost insulting to their rivals. Perfectly dominates all registers. He is capable of planting himself with two vertical passes in the rival area on the counterattack, in tenths of a second, but also cooking up possession with Modric and Kroos until he finds the definitive gap, helped by the incorporation of his full-backs. Mendy, the other who is squeezed by the arrival of Rüdiger, completed a perfect match with a mole, a kind of tradition in him in each match. This time it was a suicide pass to Militao inside the Madrid area that almost ended in a penalty from the Brazilian to Di María.