Granada-Real Madrid Half alirón asking for the time

In the forensic report of this League The importance of Madrid Route 66 will be recorded: Courtois, Ramos, Casemiro and Benzema. Four places of forced passage, plus the company of a large choir, to reach the title. But it will be, above all, the Zidane League, that almost with the same group that fell apart last year (Hazard and Militao have tiptoed and Mendy has been intermittent) has managed to keep pace in this long-distance race that has lasted five seasons (it is the first league with two summers) . He dispatched Granada with a serious game in the first half and passing Cain's in the second.

The commission to throw the blind to the League fell to that multimedia Madrid that Zidane invented in the Super Cup against Valencia with critical, public and bookmark success. That game, with the same five midfielders as those who lined up in Los Cármenes, practically all available (James has virtually asked for the account), and Jovic was the highlight of a team that, contrary to custom, It has been more rock than hammer. Then he repeated it in two derbies against Atlético, one also in Arabia and the other at the Bernabéu, with an appreciable loss of glare. The plan was to approach the ball before a vigorous opponent and also a gentle rudder hit to a team visibly happier with its results than with its game. This time Valverde started as interior and Modric defeated the right wing.

Zidane also believed that it would improve the chances of his team inside against this elastic and open Granada that defends with five and gives Foulquier two roles: lateral without the ball, vice-extreme with it. It was neither one nor the other. In six minutes Madrid took advantage of that yes but not of the French to make two goals for his plot that gave half a folder to the game and perhaps to LaLiga.

In that thicket was the shock when Mendy, one of the two field players who had not yet scored in Madrid, took a goal from the top. He prowled in the corner of the area, he looked for a support that did not exist and then he bet everything on an impossible sprint that Víctor Díaz swallowed. Almost without angle he put a brutal shoe by the stick of Rui Silva. One of those goals that always leaves the goalkeeper wrong, but also the recognition of Zidane's good eye with a side left over from horses.

And immediately, through that wide-open door, Benzema sneaked to get to the same place by a different route: cut in and finish placed with the right. He is definitely the player of this League, the Madrid Philharmonic, the sixth midfielder, the first striker and in the outside corners the fifth defense, the white and silent version of Messi. Nothing to do with that inconsistent butler who for so many years served Cristiano Ronaldo.

With the party landscaped by its French, Madrid felt comforted with that game of maximum control that its lineup dictated and even your conscience. The Isco territory. A football with little risk and little wear, very useful in this leg breaker where everything is decided.

The miracle team reaction

Granada threw out the best of their repertoire, the aerial game. Eleven heads goals, more than anyone in the championship, had scored. Domingos Duarte was able to sign the twelfth, but Courtois, another of the leaders of this League, took it off. It was a parenthesis in that serene dominance of Madrid, who at the break could finish off the job with another auction by the multidisciplinary Benzema rejected by Rui Silva and in another by Isco who stumbled behind Granada.

However, An error by Casemiro against Carlos Fernández, well exploited by Machís, returned the team to Diego Martínez. There it appeared the energy and enthusiasm of a group that is at all-time highs and Madrid suffered. Carlos Fernández and Machís, effervescent the whole match, brushed the tie.

Zidane understood that the initial formula had been exhausted and changed the step with two extremes, Rodrygo and Asensio, the most drinkable in recent games. Granada had already been left without a right back, due to Foulquier's injury, and had improvised there with Azeez, a midfielder, but he kept pushing, on the ground and in the air. They were the most discolored minutes of Madrid in this post-pandemic. Courtois saved a shot from Antoñín and Sergio Ramos, almost on the line, another from Azeez. Zidane's team, overwhelmed as never in recent months, ended up coming ashore. The promised land. The league.