Real Madrid-Osasuna Postclassic Hangover – AS.com

The weather is unstable in Madrid. This time it was autumn. BA brave, orderly, and intelligent Osasuna took off to lower the blind on Ancelotti’s team, which sheds with worrying frequency. Without Modric’s compass he was lost in a domain of artifice. What does not occur to Vinicius or Benzema does not occur to anyone. Asensio is still in the valley moment. Camavinga has not continued his good start. The sides push little. Kroos goes diesel. Hazard only plays like at Chelsea in dreams. The forwards of the bench are ornamental. And Osasuna is serious. From such a conjunction of stars there was a draw and a heavy post-classic hangover.

Soccer, like cooking, has its own geography. Osasuna is the deep north. Male football, brave, fiery warrior, with more corduroy than silk. A designation of origin and a nuisance for the one in front. Arrasate, who is from the area, took it the first time: pressure in hand is better than a hundred flying dribbles. That was what Madrid found, a team on the prowl, with three centrals (that’s how they won at Villarreal), five refreshment players compared to their last game and a double wall of solidarity that crowded Madrid in a few meters. A cooperative football that has a statistical reflection: up to ten different scorers in as many league games until reaching the Bernabéu.

Camavinga, failed experiment

Ancelotti completely changed the right wing, the most harmless at the Camp Nou, and put Carvajal, Camavinga and Asensio in for very different reasons. The side needs legs; the midfielder, experience, and the Balearic, confidence. Camavinga is a footballer yet to be defined with the risk that accompanies his kind: he can occupy so many places that in the end they do not find him any. At the moment he has already tried what he is not: neither lateral nor left exterior. Neither, by restless and hyperactive, the rigor of a broom midfielder can be guessed at. So it will be necessary to agree that his place is the one he occupied before Osasuna, as a round trip, the counterpoint of Kroos, but it is not enough, nor will it probably reach, to give the game the cleanliness of Modric, who, at 36 years and seven games in a month, they stopped prudently this time.

From Camavinga it was the first white occasion, in a counter in which he traveled as a companion to Asensio, his assistant in the set. He was not able to cross his shot. In Madrid, a certain propensity to counterattack appears again, which he already exhibited in Barcelona. It is difficult to have Vinicius and not play at that, although the first notable action of the Brazilian was on a tile: a break with the body, center back and left out of temper to Carvajal’s stands. The second was a crossed whip with almost no room to arm his right. An auction of those who already feel capable of everything. Not to stop believing is not to stop growing seems the motto of a footballer who has gone from insistent to consistent. He kicked the door.

Vinicius and ten more

Despite the good predisposition of Carvajal, some start from Camavinga and a couple of distant attempts from Kroos, Madrid was reduced to the occurrences of Vinicius, who did not give much more. Osasuna will have spent hundreds of times worse at the Bernabéu than those that the first half of this clash gave him. Another thing is that he put so much effort in defending that he did not give Madrid reasons for concern in the other area. In an involuntary thigh shot from Kike García that came out high, he summed up his adventures in attack in the first half.

What did not appear on the inside was sought by Ancelotti on the outside. Rodrygo for Camavinga, clueless and admonished, to give flight to the right wing, and Asensio to that role as an interior in which the Italian believes he will fit. A maneuver that had a double effect: Madrid’s game was more funny and more Osasuna spaces. In a perfect counter he was able to take advantage. Between Kike García and Chimy Ávila they placed Moncayola only before Courtois, but his shot crashed into the post.

Rodrygo, fleeting hope

It was the trigger for a more active game because Rodrygo was the shock that the white team needed. Your discretion is confusing. He is there to compete a sprint to Vinicius and he compensates with a finishing touch for his inferiority in dribbling. Of those who have marched through that band, he now seems the most solvent.

Madrid put the focus on him and on the triangle Mendy, Kroos, Vinicius, but there Nacho Vidal and Moncayola closed all the gaps. In fact, the best of the white team had a classic air: what Benzema invented with no help other than his ingenuity. With a jog he took two defenders of Osasuna out of the play and his left hand touched the squad. Twenty minutes from the end Ancelotti got the blanket over his head: three changes, Hazard included, and a 4-2-3-1 assault with the Belgian behind Benzema and Rodrygo and Vinicius on the flanks. That shake only left a cross shot from Marcelo on loan from Vinicius, always Vinicius, who did not take the door. Until further notice this will be Madrid, two steps forward and one backward. And that is a pig trot.