Real Madrid-Athletic Much Benzema and few legs

Where neither the strength, nor the imagination, nor the nerve, nor the game arrived Benzema and Courtois arrived. A header from the nine, a tree lost in the forest until then, and a right hand in the discount, combined with a saving stop by Courtois, closed the poker of Madrid, already co-leader, against an Athletic helpless by two imprudence of Raúl García, who misjudged the desire that the white team has. It was a triumph in the middle of the desert, only forgivable for the three previous successes. Athletic did enough with resisting an hour. The game ended with dignity, in the opponent's area.

Zidane did not end the climb to the Himalayas with the summit against Atlético. The apostle of ultra-rotation now recites an eleven, with the only assonance rhymes of injuries and penalties, probably because the bench has become evanescent. So against Athletic there were those on Saturday minus the punished Casemiro, relieved by Valverde. The Uruguayan is something else, a less positional and more elastic footballer, with less removal and more traction. So Kroos was left as an axis, less applied in the retreat than the Brazilian.

With ten

Garitano took a classic turn, He removed Muniain and put Raúl García in, substitute in the four previous games. In bad time. The Navarrese has not passed one to Madrid since the days of Atlético, often the hard way. Until this Tuesday they had taken 16 yellows in games against the whites. In thirteen minutes he saw two more and left Athletic with ten. His mission was to block Kroos' ball exit and he lost his hand twice in a neutral zone due to excessive zeal, due to overmotivation. That spoiled the good exit of Athletic to the stage, screwing Madrid with his pressure and with the speed of Williams, to which a frank shot was crossed against Courtois while Carvajal charged him to the edge of the law.

That first Madrid was not, by far, the team that knew how to solve the urgent and important thing in a week, which assumed that if you can't play better you can play more together with a similar result. This time he did not fan the circulation or go to Unai Simón's gates with the hunger he showed in the derby. And Athletic demonstrated its condition as a team resistant to adversity, to that legacy that makes it play many times beyond its possibilities.

The artillery, the scare and Karim

Madrid had a slow transition from survivor mode to pursuer mode what is your turn now. And he checked again that the saint is going to heaven before hermetic equipment. This time he did not find, on the way out, where to sneak into the right, the band in which Lucas lost his magic, and Nor did he infiltrate Benzema among the rojiblancos centrals. More awake was Vinicius, whose lucidity recedes as the play progresses. And when the first half threatened to go blank, Madrid simmered a play on the edge of the area and Kroos, from outside her and in left of Vinicius, applied a dry shoe that Unai Simón did not see. The artillery where the infantry had not been able to reach.

The goal left Madrid in Babia, mistakenly confident that it was done. And that's where a diminished but whole Athletic got into the game. Capa combined with De Marcos and reached the area as nine. Courtois took his first shot, but not the second. That opened a manual siege, a game played in a very narrow corridor, on the edge of the Athletic area.

There Valverde no longer painted anything and Isco arrived, more refined for the minimalist game. Less logical was the departure of Vinicius, because in the bands was the exit of the labyrinth and because the postoperative period of Asensio is getting long. There were moments of stress because Athletic closed all the roads, but in the end Benzema escaped, who in a play without elaboration, a Carvajal center, put his head between three rojiblancos defenses and dispatched a very dark game, the kind for which Madrid has already paid for this course. Vesga was still able to draw, but Courtois hung a medal with a blessed hand and Benzema another, to finish the match in discount and hide a bad night behind the scoreboard.