Real Madrid 1 Barcelona 2
Ronaldo 11, Puyol 49, Abidal 79
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This Clasico was a good spectacle.
But not a great spectacle.
Jose Mourinho dropped Ozil and Marcelo, started Higuain and Benzema together, and used the disgusting Pepe as a spoiler in central midfield alongside hatchet-man Lassana Diarra, and brought back experienced bandit Ricardo Carvalo.
His approach was too paranoid.
Ozil, a fast, modern raider who plays the ball early, complements main man Cristiano. If Jose didn’t have the bottle to play Ozil in midfield, he could have played him wide right. That’s where he threw the game away.
But they scored an early goal.
From inside his own half, Benzema released Ronaldo on the left. Switching to turbo, the CR7 muscle-machine skipped wide of Pique and fired a left foot shot between the legs of keeper Pinto.
1-0 to Real Madrid.
Then the visitors hit back.
After 16, a Fabregas chip gave Alexis a half-chance, an opportunist back-header when he was off-balance, that looped onto the crosbar bar.
When Barcelona were 1-0 down after 25 minutes, they needed to find a pass to Alexis, I figured.
After 40, they found that pass to Alexis and he was just onside. But the flag went up.
Pepe, a thuggish, impetuous thespian, stamped on the foot of Busquets, then got Pique booked by pretending he’d been elbowed.
Barcelona probed, Madrid hustled, Messi had a shot saved at the near post, Iniesta wasn\’t as good as that, failing to even hit the side-netting.
Ronaldo had begun his night with a terrific block tackle on Pique and now he chased a ball as I thought, “He’s not gonna get that!” But he somehow kept the ball in play.
Mourinho\’s team were creating pressure on the ball, so that we saw Iniesta jump up and backwards to control a ball on his bicep. That was the best a great player could do at that moment.
After 42, Ramos was playing Messi onside, but the flag went up again.
When the second half started I thought : Real Madrid will foul and cheat and squabble and fall over for the next 45.
After 49, a driven Xavi corner, hit with pinpoint precision, caught Pepe ball-watching and Puyol scored with a diving header from eight yards.
That made it 1-1 after 49 minutes.
My split bet was : Over 2.5/Over 3 goals, so I now had a chance.
Ramos replied with a vicious foul on Alexis in the centre circle. Then got a foot to Iniesta’s shot to divert the ball onto the bar. At the other end, Benzema hit the outside of the post with a fine header.
Ozil for Higuain after 62 was a good call, since Higuain the poacher was terrible. He\’s not a counter-attacker who can make slick passes at high speed, as Ozil can. Higuain is just a box in the fox.
After a wicked foul by sub Jose Callejon on Messi, Pepe trod on Messi’s hand while the Argentinian was sitting on the ground.
Then Busquets headed wide from a Xavi free-kick.
Just as I was wondering whether Ozil could win the game, Real Madrid suddenly bunched at the back. Messi had the ball in the middle with three players round him and Fabregas was near the D with four players round him, leaving Abidal unmarked on the left, so Messi picked out his left back and, as Casillas froze, Abidal had time to poke a low shot past him for the winner.
Barcelona, who had played keep-ball to score the winning goal, played keep-ball till the final whistle and won this first leg of the Copa del Rey.
Second leg : Nou Camp, Wednesday, January 29th.
Mourinho played a spoiling game and it didn’t work. That gamble failed. Nullification and physicality didn’t work.
VERDICT?
Real Madrid defended like Jose’s Inter Milan in the first half, but still lost.
Apologies for 9.30 a.m. glitch, when I lost a paragraph, rewrote it from memory, then found it again. But as I try to correct mistakes, I can see that this software has problems…