“90 minutes in the Bernabeu son molto longos ”was a warning from the ill-fated Juanito to the players of the Inter de Milan after losing 3-1 in the first leg of the semifinals of the UEFA in the 1985/86 season. In the second leg, the match agreed with Juanito after the Madrid signed a 5-1 to come back and stand in the final and the phrase made a fortune since then to explain the stage fright that the white stadium instills in some of the rivals who visit it.
35 years later and in the midst of a pandemic, Real Madrid has temporarily abandoned its stadium to accelerate the remodeling works taking advantage of the absence of public and has settled in the Alfredo Di Stéfano from Valdebebas, where the team Zinedine
Zidane has played 26 games counting The league and the Champions, with a balance of 21 victories, four defeats and a single draw.
Madrid, reliable against the big players and weak against the small ones
Madrid receives tomorrow Barcelona in one of the Classics most transcendental garters of recent times with the confidence of having solved almost all their most demanding matches in Valdebebas with victories. Last year, at the exit from confinement, Madrid set out to win the 11 games that remained to be champion and won the six that were played at Di Stéfano.
This season it has happened that it has won all the games where there was something important at stake and instead it has unexpectedly fallen against some of the weaker teams that have stepped on Valdebebas. At the premiere in Champions fell 2-3 to him Shakhtar Donetsk In a defeat that almost cost them elimination in the group stage and in the League they have lost three games to theoretically inferior rivals: Cadiz (0-1), Alaves (1-2) and I raised (1-2).
In these four games, the teams emerged victorious applying a very similar approach that is often choked by Real Madrid: retreat near the area with two lines of four to close all the gaps and that the responsibility for unbalancing falls on the forwards.
When he has been seen with the water around his neck, the Madrid has managed to give a competitive version. It happened against the Inter de Milan (3-2) and the Gladbach (2-0) when the shadow of elimination was flying over Valdebebas and in the rounds of the KO knocked down the Atalanta (3-1) in the round of 16 and at Liverpool with the same result in the first leg of the quarters.
Against him Athletic in the league derby of the first round on Madrid he won with a convincing performance 2-0. That was the only defeat for the Simeone in the first round, where the colchoneros scored 50 out of 57 points