In Glasgow, at the beginning of his second chapter in Madrid, Ancelotti discovered that the last notes that Zidane left him were quite accurate: that those who spent last year on the bench (Isco, Marcelo …) did not suffer unfair treatment; that those who came out on loan (Odegaard, Jovic …) deserved it; that Nacho is more than a third center-back and that looking back at the quarry was justified. Ibrox left enough evidence that everything has to be done, that Lunin can curdle, that Rodrygo has an intermittent charm and that young people like Arribas or Miguel Gutiérrez can complete the squad in times of scarcity. The homegrown players, who entered the second half en masse, balanced the overwhelming initial superiority of Rangers with their vigor, which, however, went back to the very end, when their weeks of filming crashed down on Madrid.
Roy Evans, who coached Liverpool in the mid-1990s without much to brag about (a League Cup in four years), loved summers, “that time of year when you don't miss matches.” Now they are also lost and they are not as painless defeats as Evans believed. Ask Madrid about that 7-3 against Atlético in New Jersey. But it is true that summer defeats hardly leave scars. That is for fall, winter and spring, the seasons of drama. Now is the time for illusion, to believe that the one who arrives will be better than the one who left. And if there are no new faces, as in this Madrid, they are invented. And you look at Odegaard or Jovic as if they had never been here. In fact, there were times when they seemed not to be there.
Ancelotti started with both, I suspect for different purposes. The club hopes that the Norwegian will end up being a profitable player and the Serbian, a source of income. And he did not touch the most successful drawing of Zidane, 4-3-3, with only two homegrown players, Chust and Blanco, those who have more options to make a squad after another summer in which the club has forgiven itself to go to the market (with the exception of Alaba) unless Mbappé remedies it. But Odegaard and Jovic seem to be where they left off and the rest are still showing the marks of their flip-flops. So the test served to grow, in equal parts, in rhythm and restlessness.
Veterans and novices
Ancelotti has a lot of work ahead of him: find a new tribal chief, stretch the remains that have come less than the imperial era (Marcelo, Isco, Bale, Modric …) and get a dozen footballers, future investments, to come out at the end of the shell. But before arriving, it is necessary to put the team at takeoff speed. Three weeks into the league and with the main newcomers on vacation, he is worryingly far from it. In Ibrox he found himself at the mercy of the initial swell of the Rangers, a team that the bankruptcy did not clean the pride.
At the start he took Madrid ahead with a game as little Scottish as the day, unusually sunny. With a boiler-busting pressure, bending to his sides, playing space with precision, he put this first Madrid in his field and almost in his area. A cross shipment that Sakala did not reach, another Zambian cross-over, a header from Goldson, a left-footed shot from Kent (the last two saved by Lunin) and a shot from the latter's crossbar almost to an empty goal summed up that unstoppable flood with a parenthesis : Rodrygo's great goal, born from one against Odegaard. The Norwegian opened, at the end of his adventure, the pass to the Brazilian, who cleared the area with a double cut, in first, out later, and subtly finished off the net. Of how many promises the club has bought in recent times, it is the one with the most goals. There is his great virtue. And in the lack of continuity, his sin.
Rodrygo and the bombing
In the first half we only heard from Lunin, providential on four occasions, and from the two centrals, Chust and Nacho, who turned off all the lights of the fire. It was a full-blown bombardment of a Madrid adrift, to which neither Isco nor Odegaard offered a way out and with three castaways, silent witnesses to the extreme suffering of the team. The Rangers, inflated by its audience, was remarkably superior in legs, ambition and elaboration. Then, at the auction, he screwed up everything.
At half-time Ancelotti decided that it was better to play without nine than with Jovic and put Arribas there, a player who is difficult to classify: he is almost extreme, almost playmaker, almost point guard. With him Madrid improved. Or at least the party began to have two directions. A header from the skilled youth squad could increase White's advantage, but an overconfidence at the start Lucas Vázquez ended in a tie. He stole Kamara and shot Sakala, who had deserved to hang that medal long before.
With ten
In a way the Rangers got their merits and the score wrong. Because Madrid's youngsters balanced the game a lot in the final stretch. The entrance of Miguel Gutiérrez released Marcelo and they were accomplices of Madrid's best antics, In one of them the youth squad crashed a ball into the ball.
With Madrid already touching the null combat, Nacho saw the second yellow for a spectacular iron and staying with ten in the first preseason game ended up liquidating the energies of Ancelotti's team. Without the two center-backs from the start, Itten hunted a half lap in the heart of the area and culminated the Scottish comeback. There were plenty of reasons in that final stretch, as at the beginning, for the Italian coach to raise his eyebrow, that gesture so much his that indicates that he is on guard. So it will be until the start of the League.