There are flesh and blood endings that grant or take away titles and metaphorical endings that open or close stages in the life of a club. The former bloom mostly in May. One of the latter is being held today in the inhospitable Alfredo di Stéfano. If Madrid beat Borussia Mönchengladbach they will be in the second round of the Champions League. If they tie, they need Inter to beat Shakhtar. If he loses, a wound will open for history: the white team will have lost for the first time in a league of a competition that has embraced him better than any other, a small hole will open in the treasury and the sports project will be left out in the open, with Zidane in the front row (follow the game live on As.com).
Madrid is now a shot in the air, with constant mood swings, but more reliable in the first-class ports (he has won at the Camp Nou, in Pizjuán and twice at Inter) than in the tacks (defeats against Cádiz, Alavés, a Valencia in minimum and double against Shakhtar). In more than half of those punctures he was missing in Ramos. In 80% of the last European defeats, too. Today he returns, after a month away and with four complete training sessions. Enough to lead Madrid in a key game and with the team very affected by injuries. Now they concentrate on the attack: Hazard, Odegaard, Mariano and since yesterday, Jovic, with a tendinosis. It goes for basket case. In return, Carvajal is ready, but he has trained even less than Ramos and has not played since November 25. It remains to be seen if Zidane will dare with him from the start or will pull Nacho.
Fatigue
For what remains he has just enough and he has no choice but to repeat with those available, many of them heavily loaded with matches. Varane adds 23 in three months; Modric, 22; Kroos, 19. Everyone will have to repeat today. Too Benzema, whose exclusion from the French team is a relief, but also comes out of injury. He scored in the four games before suffering it and has not done so in the two after. Lucas Vázquez and Vinicius aim to accompany him in the vanguard. The first, on the verge of leaving in summer and with a contract only until June, is already the eighth most used player on the squad. He only missed one game in the last two and a half months. The second, after seven consecutive substitutions, was decisive in Seville.
Borussia's accounts are also straightforward. A draw is enough to pass, a victory gives him the first place and a defeat condemns him except for a tie between Inter and Shakhtar in Milan. His last defeat against Conte's team complicates his life.
Borussia, a team with 120 years of history and a glorious decade, that of the 70s, is an example of good management in German football. In a very short time it has gone from being the eighteenth team in television revenues to the fifth thanks to its sporting successes. Max Eberl, who played 281 games in German football without scoring a goal, is the club's key player from his position as sports director. “We are the Gallic village against Bayern, Dortmund, Leipzig and Leverkusen,” he says. He's so committed that four years ago he allowed himself to say no to an offer from Bayern.
Elvedi's doubt
Eberl is known in a selling club, although the team got into the Champions League allowed him to keep all his key players this year. They were the signings. He also took a risk a year and a half ago with the arrival of Marco Rose as a coach. Rose had worked for Salzburg for six years, four of them in the lower categories. With the youth he won the Youth League and with the first team two Austrian leagues. Keita, Upamecano or Haaland passed through his hands. At Borussia he replaced Dieter Hecking, who had been fifth the year before, to give the team an offensive turn. It worked. Borussia finished the fifth day of the group stage as the top scorer in the Champions League. They are a team with an easy trigger but vulnerable behind: only Eintracht have conceded more goals in the upper half of the Bundesliga table.
The duel also comes with problems. They are not Jantschke, Bensebaini and Hofmann, the last two starters in the first leg, and yesterday the central Elvedi returned to training, missing due to a muscle injury in the last two games. If he plays, Kramer and Neuhaus, intended by Bayern, will form the double pivot-devourer (they are the first and fifth players who have traveled the most kilometers in the competition). If not, Kramer will act as central and Zakaria occupies his place in the middle. Upstairs, Rose will hardly join Thuram, Plea and Embolo, his French-Swiss artillery. Not even a trivote is ruled out. It's not in your manual, but the value of a draw may encourage you to overprotect yourself.