The luck of the draw
BAYERN MATCH SUGGESTS THREE IN A ROW IS FAR FROM A FORMALITY
Real Madrid continue to ride their good fortune as they scrape past a spirited Bayern to reach the Champions League final |
Real Madrid tried so hard to lose this semifinal. Bayern Munich tried so hard to win it. That neither could achieve this apparently shared aim speaks in the first place to Real’s pure champion will and secondly to that nexus of gamemanagement, calamitous Bayern defending and something close to a kind of white-shirted voodoo, the ability to win even while sputtering and panting.
This was a fun, wild, odd game of football that ended 2-2 at the Bernabeu and 4-3 to Real on aggregate. At the end of which a couple of things seemed clear. Above all this was just a brilliant game. These late-stage encounters are supposed to unwind like a game of chess, a matter of grudging details. This was a more like a seasick game of quoits on the deck of a storm-tossed pirate ship, 95 minutes of half-chances, howlers and dreadful defending.
This leads on to point two, the ongoing, perhaps misguided conviction that somebody somewhere is finally going to connect in a decisive way with that elegantly presented champion’s glass jaw. Liverpool and Roma were to fight it out yesterday night to see who would travel to Kiev later this month with a chance to stop Real from making it three in a row. With this in mind Bayern might just have offered an anatomy of how to go about doing it, with a performance that will be picked apart and pored over with interest over the next few weeks.
For long periods in the second half Bayern were heroic. They thrashed Real 2-2, battered them to a score draw, steamrollered their own way right out of the competition. Albeit at times it was as though Real were actively trying to concede goals, with Thomas Muller left unmarked for pretty much the whole of the second half, constantly hollering for the ball in another traumatically wide open green space while Marcelo ambled back wearing a look of mild curiosity.
Real’s weaknesses tessellated intriguingly — the most telling was the constant weakness Bayern found on the flanks
With the final kick of the game, and with Bayern a kick from the final, Muller eventually got that cross from the left and launched himself, missing by a toenail. As the whistle blew there were spent, crumpled bodies across the turf. Bayern had 22 shots at goal to Real’s nine. They hogged the ball. They reduced Cristiano Ronaldo to 13 completed passes. But for an error by Sven Ulreich, Jupp Heynckes would now be preparing for a swansong final.
Benzema’s second
Instead Ulreich came up with something genuinely strange, seeming to stop and then simply lie down on the turf as the ball bobbled towards him, a man overcome with weariness, allowing Karim Benzema to score his second of the game.
David Alaba’s willingness to attack the temporary right back Lucas Vazquez had Real looking at times like a three-legged dog of a team, always listing to one side, exposing a lack of cover for the full-backs.
The ball fell the wrong way three or four times. And both Bayern goals came from surges out wide, the second after fine work from the excellent Niklas Sule and a cross that James Rodriguez put away before producing a laughably prim nocelebration-celebration right in front of the delirious away fans.
Real lack a little pace these days without Gareth Bale on the pitch. It is possible with a little luck to play a bold high line, to press with the throttle to the floor, as both Liverpool and Roma do at times. Real will be favourites but there will still be hope in the familiar sense of brittleness on show. Their opponents will surely look to play with a highpressing sense of risk.