Big football: the dynamics of the unexpected

While football professionals hide our fears by trying to summarize football in numbers as an escapist exercise that only makes us more limited elements to compete with, Madrid-City showed at the Bernabéu that the game is only a matter of quality and courage to combat uncertainty. When, as in the first game, goals are not the result of merit, but, on the contrary, can appear against them, it teaches us that being competitive means knowing how to accept and fight against chance. That is its essence, its nature.

Madrid somatized Champions as your comfort zone. No one breaks him emotionally, not even City in the first half hour at the Bernabéu. Having the best goalkeeper in history means that defending so low for so long is not a risk: Courtois is not human. That’s the difference. As a result of playing with that advantage and his habit of winning, he was able to find the goal that revealed Ederson. Hurt by that blow, City hesitated for a while in competition that has not yet somatized itself as comfortable (unlike Premier). When it was worse, football once again showed us its essence: the dynamics of the unexpected. De Bruyne’s goal.

They are by far the two best teams in the world, led by two coaches who add great value in opposite positions.

ancelotti It is he who allows his people to be who they are, without any conversion other than allowing order to be what the good guys create by playing. It is a spontaneous, creative, natural order, where players give off happiness. In this period Madrid are Kroos, Modric and Benzema those who turn on the light, those who create fluid and friendly environments in which all others can grow. While Kroos was regal (with his hair barely tousled), Modric and Benzema showed difficulty in combating the amount of adversity a team like City creates. And that is that being great makes you unforgettable, but not eternal.

guardiolaon the contrary, and also respecting what the players are (they all grow with him), he creates and manages to add a common language that expands what football players already are among themselves. This has achieved a level of stability and control in all its equipment never known before. Pep feels more geometric football, where playing with his own he tries to make sure that the opponent does not have the ball or space to repel him. He is on his way to breaking all the records in history.

He Madrid has as much jazz as the city of the symphony orchestra, a sharp symphony with Haaland that allows the song not to drag, to last just long. Thinking about what will happen in the Manchester game is just a trivial exercise in self-promotion. As the wise Arsenio Iglesias said, there is shame in excess. Football is order, talent and the ability to overcome and fight against the unexpected. Madrid is exceptional in this. Only age and the City can fight it.

The game will be everything that happens while we talk about what will and won’t happen. All that matters, like football, is what happens while we’re making plans.