Those of "We are Madrid"

For those of us who don't really like football in winter (excluding finals, Champions League and World Cup), the match between Mallorca and Madrid was a great match.

Because it was about everything that interests us about soccer when we don't like soccer: its psychological and marginal aspects;

the electricity of a hostile environment for the rival, wear and tear, kicks and friction, aerial balls on a gusty day, missed penalties, own goals.

EGB fifth grade recess one morning in 1988.

Look, soccer is not the complicated sport that is sometimes claimed, what happens is that it becomes intellectualized because it feeds many of us;

we need to fill it with improbable drawings, adjectives, overanalysis, subordinates, foolish and crazy epic, risky blackboards with arrows to nowhere.

But this almost always, in the most important moments of a World Cup, a Champions League or a League, is about a guy who picks up a ball, goes to the penalty spot, leaves it there and shoots;

This is about a guy who waits for him under the crossbar with all the ballots almost sold except a couple of them, and with those he plays.

We think, read and write about love, we talk about love, we despair of love, but love must have someone with whom to choose a movie every night and sleep together: someone to say good morning and ask you from time to time when how are you, with that we waste whatever time it is.

Soccer is a bit similar.

Bilardo summed it up in the most graphic way possible: “The one who invented the color of the shirts was a phenomenon.

Thanks to that, what you have to do is, if you see someone with the same color as yours, give it to him.

And kick the goalie.

Of the two archers, the one he did not eat with you ”.

At the end of the game in Son Moix, statistics of the fouls committed by Mallorca when they played against Barcelona (9) and Madrid (29) quickly circulated.

Those of "We are Madrid", tapping on the chest (I include myself, but without tapping because I already have the ribcage of a zombie), they must think that only they think that, not the rivals.

SomoselMadrid has to know how to govern those games, or at least their result, because a team has to appear in the depth of a squad;

better yet, a gang.

So, against that very legitimate atmosphere of Mallorca and its charlatan captain, what did Madrid oppose?

Is there a player who runs through midfield to yell at an opponent who has just kicked one of their own?

When was the last time you all surrounded the referee demanding a card, a penalty, a quote, whatever?

Madrid has a character problem.

Benzema, Modric and Kroos are not a problem for not having character, they are a blessing.

But if Benzema doesn't protest the foul for which Rudiger's goal was disallowed, someone has to be on the field who goes to the referee to tell him that the mess is monumental, that they have stolen a goal, and to keep whistling it around to that.

Someone has to do the work of Hierro and Redondo, of Casemiro and Ramos;

of guys who knew that a card on time saves a lot of problems, who put dangerous frontiers on the field according to which they told the opponent: we can play soccer or kicks, we know how to play both, maybe we'll do worse with the latter, but we are all going to take the same risk, not just us.

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