Madrid end five-year wait
This was a Liga campaign in which Real Madrid’s ambitions and coach Zinedine Zidane’s squad rotation proved decisive
In the end, there was no drama, no twist and no doubt. A season that for much of the year had been defined by late goals was eventually decided by a very early one.
In the end it came down to the last day, but just one minute and 37 seconds had gone when Isco’s pass found Cristiano Ronaldo running through. He went past Malaga keeper Carlos Kameni and rolled in the goal that set Real Madrid on their way to a first league title in five years.
Madrid had known that a draw would be enough and now they were leading. Soon the surprise news came through that Barcelona were losing 1-0 at home to Eibar. Then it was 2-0. Eventually, they came back to win 4-2, but with Madrid winning, with Karim Benzema adding another goal in the second half, it didn’t matter anyway – something that was summed up by Barca substitute Denis Suarez.
Sitting on the bench with an earphone in listening to the radio, Suarez pulled the wire out when the second goal was scored. It was over, any hint of hope extinguished.
In Madrid, supporters were already making their way to the fountain of Cibeles to celebrate. Meanwhile, down in Malaga, visiting fans sang their way to the finish, knowing that this was done now. By the touchline, subs prepared to run on, with Pepe recording it all.
Right from the beginning of the season, Madrid had targeted the title. Everyone had said it: the league is the priority. Which might sound standard, but it is actually a little unusual at a club whose identity has been built through the European Cup more than domestic dominance, even if this was their 33rd title.
More pressingly, they had won just one league title in five years; this was their second in nine. That is far too long for Madrid, a reflection of the inescapable and awkward fact that they have not been the best team in Spain over the last decade.
The league feels like a true measure
of a team and that’s why this title was given priority. Winning it makes this feel like the start of a shift.
Real coach Zinedine Zidane called it the best moment of his career – and this is a man who has had some magical moments. Eighteen months into his managerial career and he’s won the European Cup, the European Super Cup, the Club World Cup and now La Liga. All those doubts that surrounded him – and there had been many of them – slipped way.
“They deserved it,” Barcelona’s Andres Iniesta admitted. By the end, few could doubt that. Earlier on, they probably would have done. And Barca had been complicit in their demise, of course. Madrid won it, they lost it.
Their season was perhaps summed
Zinedine Zidane called it the best moment of his career – and he has had some magical moments
up by the moment that control slipped through their fingers: three days after that incredible Champions League comeback against Paris Saint-Germain, they were beaten at La Coruna by relegation-threatened Deportivo.
Barcelona won at the Bernabeu, the Calderon, San Mames, Mestalla and the Sanchez Pizjuan, but they had been beaten by Celta, Malaga and Alaves.
Ultimately, La Liga went to the final day with just three points separating the top two teams – and Barcelona would look back on those games that they lost with regret. Yet even when they were winning, they hadn’t managed to dominate matches like they once did. They may have scored more goals than ever, but the vulnerability was always there and the focus wavered.
On one level, Madrid’s success was logical. Less logical was that it had taken them so long to win the title; five years was too long for a club of their size, the biggest and richest on the planet. A look at their typical bench said much: Alvaro Morata, James Rodriguez, Isco, Marco Asensio, Mateo Kovacic.
In the end, Zidane used all of them, especially in a six-week spell in the spring and early summer when the secondstring XI started almost every away game. Nineteen different players scored for Real and 20 players clocked up in excess of 1,000 minutes on the pitch. They responded too. The debate was served: was the B Team better than the A Team?
Those who were not natural starters made a case to be, while those who were natural starters were put under pressure and allowed to rest. It is not an easy balancing act, but Zidane had managed it. Ronaldo was left out more than ever before and he finished the campaign better than ever before.
The Portuguese star admitted that he had prepared to be at his best for the final weeks of the season, not to limp to the finish line like he had in previous seasons. As if to prove a point, he scored 14 in the last six weeks.
Together, they took the title. It had been a curious season, one that defied easy analysis. It wasn’t just at the top, it was throughout the table. This was the season where things seemed to change often during games, but where broad patterns remained the same; where the hint that something might happen, never quite materialised.
For the first half of the season, it seemed that Sevilla might challenge for the title, but they fell away. Ultimately, it was Madrid and Barcelona who took it to the finish – and even there, it had long felt like it would be Real Madrid who would take the title. With Atletico Madrid dropping points early, and recovering in the spring to overhaul Sevilla, the top four were the top four for almost all season long.
The next three were fifth, sixth, and seventh almost all season, with Villarreal and Real Sociedad taking the European places while Athletic Bilbao had to wait on the Copa del Rey Final. And it took a 94th-minute goal for them to get there, as tiny Eibar, pound for pound surely the season’s best team, went close but couldn’t take that step into the top seven.
Meanwhile, the bottom three were in the relegation zone for the whole of 2017. Put bluntly, Granada, Osasuna and Sporting Gijon were awful. Leganes and Deportivo survived with a week to spare on 34 and 33 points respectively.
Real Madrid had not always convinced entirely, but there had always been a sense that they had so much about them, so much variety, so much talent and strength in depth, that they would find a way through – even on those days when they did not play especially
Ronaldo was left out more than ever before and he finished the campaign better than ever before
well, and there were many of them.
Atletico Madrid’s Filipe Luis perhaps put it best after losing to Real in the Champions League. “They have a really good squad: they adapt to every single game, different [types of] games.
“They can build from the back, they can play long ball, they have good counter-attacks, they have good set pieces, so it is really hard to play against them.” By the end, Real Madrid had control too.
Atletico-Barcelona, Barcelona-Real Madrid, Real Madrid-Barcelona, Real Madrid-Atletico, Sevilla-Real Madrid. In all of those games, the result shifted in the last five minutes, sometimes more than once.
The last of those, of course, was Lionel Messi’s dramatic 92nd-minute winner in the
clasico. James Rodriguez’s late goal looked set to win the title, a draw effectively ending it; Messi’s even later goal won the game, and opened up the race once more.
And so we had a sprint to the finish line, but over the final weeks Madrid were reliable, only momentarily under pressure – when it took a late goal to defeat Valencia. Immediately after the clasico they went to Coruna, with a B Team again, and scored after 50 seconds, eventually getting six goals. There was something about that win that set them up and defined the decisive days.
Madrid had picked up points with late goals, beyond the 81st minute, in a quarter of their matches this season, although they had dropped points late too, against Barcelona, Atletico and Sevilla. But as the final weeks went by after that clasico, with Isco now a regular in the side, they didn’t need epic escapes. They scored six against Depor, four at Granada, four against Sevilla, four in Vigo. They scored early too: in seven games they went ahead seven times before the half-hour; in six of those within 10 minutes.
On the final day, it wasn’t even two minutes. Nine long months, five long years; in the end it was over quickly.