Real Madrid—serial winners—Ancelloti-time.

Celtic (my team) played Real Madrid in the Champion League, November 2022. They beat us 2—1 at Parkhead. We should have been well ahead at half-time. Missed chances. Punished and comprehensively beaten. Carlo Ancelloti said all the usual things about the fans and the stadium. Real Madrid are not the best team in the competition. They haven’t been for a few years. That would be last year’s winners Manchester City. Madrid edged them out on penalties. That late, late goal again, doing it for City. Two years ago City looked to get past Madrid. In a team filled with superstars, they just had to see it out in the Santiago Bernabeu. Two late goals, City out.

I’d watched bits of the PSG v Borussia Dortmund (the sixth best team in Germany). PSG hit the post and bar five times. They couldn’t score. They couldn’t get that equaliser. We’d all the usual talk of a defensive masterclass. I see it every week at Parkhead. Opposition teams sit in. Celtic simply have better players. When the diddy teams comes away with a result, my team are castigated and the opposition are lauded. Defensive masterclass as a cliché is always used. Mats Hummels made a joke about it. Ally McCoist, the commentator, was trying too hard to make something special out of it by calling him ‘The Magnet’.  

Another way of putting it is they got lucky. Teams, and managers in particular, need to be lucky.

26th May, 1999. Camp Nou Stadium in Barcelona. Bayern Munich are beating Manchester United 1—0. Game over.

United had run out of ideas. Bayern were seeing it out. Substitutes, Teddy Sheringham scored in the 91st minute. Ole Gunnar Soljskaer on the 93rd minute. Dead and buried. They scored in Fergie-time, which has come to feel like Ancelloti-time.  

 Goalkeepers? Manuel Neuer sold the shirts. Simple. Bayern get the lead and they look to see the game out. Real Madrid look out—again. Neuer makes the kind of goalkeeping error that has an under-ten coach turning away in disgust. Vincius Junior’s shot was of the past-back variety.

The back-up striker, Joselu Mato, didn’t even have time to thank Neuer for dropping the ball at his feet to knock into the net, before he’d scored the winner. Bayern were gone in just over sixty seconds. Harry Kane, who went there to pick up silverware, picked up nought in his debut season.

It’s difficult to imagine the former Stoke and Newcastle striker heading to Wembley to play in the Champions League final.  Carlo Ancelotti looked to have run out of ideas as Everton manager. Going back to Real Madrid…well, that’s hardly a step down. Pep Guardiola is no longer in Spain. Barcelona are no longer the best team in the world. It’s a one-horse race. But when it comes to the Champions League, Ancelotti and Madrid have had the luck of the devil. This looks like being their year, yet again. Can Dortmund beat Madrid? No.  But they can score and they do have ‘The Magnet’. Dog’s chance? Hey Jude, Poor old Harry, it’s a dog’s life.

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