Osasuna-Real Madrid Madrid urgently needs the alirón

Everything was strange except the result. Rodrygo played Vinicius and as Vinicius. The time has come to undress. Benzema missed two penalties, something unusual in a player whose heart rate drops in the area, that rare disease that attacks scorers. Ceballos was finally the starter and said that he is here to stay. And Camavinga pivoted as if it were his job. A box of surprises that did not leave any surprises: Madrid was better from python to tail and march shot towards the title. Four points give it to him arithmetically. Osasuna began by being familiar with the leader and ended up submitting to him.

We find in Ancelotti’s Madrid three types of footballers: the usual ones, the salvageable ones and the lost cases. With a mixture of the first and second, the vice-champion appeared in Pamplona. Of the third parties, the last thing that was known is that Bale got off the plane on foot. The club dispatched him with an unexplained statement that makes it impossible to determine if he slipped the buck or had a last-minute ailment. “Will not be available,” the note said. He hasn’t been for too long.

That mestizo Madrid left some conclusions. The first, that Rodrygo has decided to also be Vinicius. In Madrid you enter without asking permission and he, until now, had been somewhat shy, perhaps dazzled by the size of the club or the company. The last two goals have unleashed him. Very close to him was Ceballos, who started for the first time. Ancelotti said that he has given him less than he deserved. You can sign below. Without him knowing very well why, he has been more a footballer in the stands than as a coach. In El Sadar he left the message that he wants (and can) stay until it was crushed by inactivity.

Praise, goal and injury

The two and the other nine found themselves involved in a game that Osasuna took it tremendously. He was bound by tradition and by the public. There is no team that causes such a huge climate change in El Sadar as Madrid.

Between Ancelotti’s team looking back and seeing no one and Osasuna free from relegation and sin, It was an open game, back and forth, very much to the measure of Madrid’s unprecedented midfield, more dynamic than methodical. A match for everyone and no one that was soon broken. It was in a set of Madrid strategy. Asensio threatened with a lateral cross from a free-kick and the thing ended in an embroidered play that passed by Ceballos and Benzema and Alaba finished twice at point-blank range. Herrera only had an answer for the first.

After the group hug of the madridistas, Osasuna tied. Half a goal was a diagonal pass from Moncayola. A low center from Chimy Ávila and the righteous foot from Budimir completed the work. That was the shock, a Madrid that is in a hurry to sing the alirón and an Osasuna with an answer for almost everything.

In that rain of shrapnel, Budimir had a goal disallowed for a one-meter offside. Osasuna was looking for Madrid’s weak point with this eleven: the exit of the ball. There was Camavinga, with a yellow card on his back from minute 4, and acting as Casemiro, the team’s costalero, the one who solves the paperwork of recovering the ball, making the essential foul and getting between the central defenders when the storm arrives. It is not among the most in-demand jobs in football and the Frenchman was fantastic.

Herrera’s double

Madrid only limped up, because Benzema was looking at the fuel needle and because Asensio is more often shadow than sun. Of course, like so many times, he appeared out of nowhere to give Madrid an advantage again. It was an opportunistic goal, the finishing touch to a sensational pass from Camavinga, who matured quickly, and a shot on the fly by Ceballos, rejected by Herrera.

The game continued to be filled with news. Alaba left with a muscular mishap, yet to determine if preventive or definitive; Carvajal returned to the left-back, his unexpected garden in Seville, and Benzema was saved by Herrera with two penalties taken from the same side.One stopped it by his own intuition and another by someone else’s reiteration. The first was the product of a hand from Chimy Ávila. A striker in his own area ends up being friendly fire. The second came in a takedown by Nacho Vidal to Rodrygo, who was playing with all the lights on. It was his night.

The relationship of events did not alter the meaning of the game. He governed Madrid, even better than in the first half, and Osasuna fought less frequently than at the beginning. He was alive by a miracle and the end of the crash gave him a chance. That final stretch, now without Ceballos or Camavinga, awakened Madrid’s utilitarianism while, change after change, Jagoba Arrasate loaded the team with artillery, but his message did not reach the Courtois area. In Herrera there was more activity. Nacho lacked a centimeter of heel to sentence, Benzema a meter to redeem himself, Vinicius two fingers to go out and kiss the saint. And Lucas Vázquez, in discount time, sentenced the Brazilian’s pass. Thus ended the little suspense that remained in a League that, seeing the end of Rodrygo, Camavinga or Ceballos, could be said to belong to everyone.