Real Madrid-Elche Only Benzema wants the League

The message was clear: Madrid watches the League on Mars. Even Perseverance can provide irrefutable proof of this. The domestic championship has become that nuisance that exists between one match and another of the Champions League. While it lasts. Madrid's biological clock marks European time and it seems impossible to fight against it. Starting with Zidane, who returned to a moderate rotation and was about to find an extreme puncture. Without Kroos and Modric, he cannot go out or buy bread. And even less without Benzema, who with two goals in the desserts, made an affidavit that he still believes in this. Only he was above the Elche worker.

The game did not have an inseparable sale of the Champions League, the headquarters of Madrid in good times and in regular times pulling badly like the one at hand. The imminent arrival of Atalanta and the accumulated delays in the League, which looked irrecoverable, explained Zidane's eleven well. Nacho, third center, and Lucas Vázquez, winger-winger, to restore the natural order of things. We may see the same thing on Tuesday. Asensio, on the bench, after having allowed to escape until the outskirts, and Vinicius, in the field, hitting his glass ceiling. Kroos and Modric, canned, by veterans and valuable. In a team with no heirs, they are still the big guns. And Ramos, in the field from minute 1 so that the end of the week catches him on notice. There are players who do not admit even a shot of pampering. In any case, Zidane now swims in abundance after weeks in which, due to injuries, he was tempted to put even the coach driver on the bench.

Escribá, who faces three games in just over a week, did not do the math either. He put eleven on his rope, those who had given him two victories in four games, including his Argentine partner in the lead. At this point there are no games in your league and that of others. It is obligatory to shoot everything. Its strength is joining lines, greatly reducing the useful surface, denying spaces.

A repeated mistake

Madrid took it as a bridge game and not as a cheat game, a border that is sometimes difficult to appreciate. Zidane's plan, scalded in failures in games like this, was to open windows on the sides with Lucas and Mendy, uninhibited by a defense with three centrals. But everything stayed in the almost. To the revolutions that Madrid circulates in games of little draft, it hardly creates a fuss. He plays on foot, drives a lot, makes the rival little tidal and does not recover quickly, a virtue that clears the way a lot in hermetic encounters. Thus he burns minutes without being a threat, he loses interest in the game and raises an opponent to whom time creates the conviction that the impossible at the beginning becomes very possible at the end. Ask Cádiz, Alavés …

Only Vinicius put a certain color in the first half, despite the fact that his chances are directly proportional to the space that the games give him. But, given the choice, always it is better to have a fast player, because speed is the only football ability that is not released. From a sprint of his came Madrid's best opportunity in the first half. He put Benzema in front of Badía, but the Frenchman finished badly on the march with the left. Vinicius is haunted by his poor definition and some goals for the comedy club, but it is more than what Zidane has wanted to do with his alignments.

Always Benzema

The rest did not seem to have their heads in the game for many minutes. He confused ability with determination and one doesn't work without the other. And Elche went to rest without a scratch. I was certainly expecting a more oppressive atmosphere.

The second half would bring tangles and surprises. In five minutes, Figueroa Vázquez took a penalty from each team: he disguised a grab on Ramos for a free-kick from the center-back and an offside was invented to avoid a tackle from behind Ramos himself to Raúl Guti. The anger was drowned out by Dani Calvo's goal, headed from a corner. Even in that, which is one of its strengths, Madrid was asleep.

Modric and Kroos' emergency entrance tested the void behind them. His is a denial of the club's anthem: veterans without novices. The Croatian's first warm center was sent by Benzema to the net with a header at the far post. Rodrygo also brought new momentum when at Wanda he was a phantom threat. Added to that burden of bullfighting shame was Hazard, the megastar whose days off are counted by the hundreds and whose goals fit on the fingers of one hand.

The end, like so many, described a Madrid with more haste than ideas, with Casemiro sticking his head in that desperate rain of centers, with Modric trying to clear the game of a surrendered team. But the game was not resolved by the brave, but by way of science, with a high-precision left-foot from Benzema. Always Benzema. Only Benzema. The glory of the French is the drama of Madrid.