Again half Madrid and again it was enough. Zidane's team is still at the back of Barça after a sleepy first half and an outstanding second. Benzema has found a match with Hazard and Asensio returned scoring on the first ball that came to him, appealing to his condition of internal transfer. Valencia was close to the goal in the first half and was a ghost in the second. The second train passed too quickly.
Six months ago, Madrid did not leave Valencia's bones in the Arabian Super Cup, filling the lineup of midfielders. Valverde, Casemiro, Kroos, Modric and Isco liquidated the Celades team at that time. Zidane made a note. The first four repeated in Valdebebas. Maybe he was also going to start the fifth, an intermittent visibility genius who studies for Guti, but a last minute injury left him out. In reality, the Frenchman reaffirmed himself in the team that night with Hazard for Malaga and Benzema, then injured, for Jovic, and only changed two regarding the duel against Eibar. The new abnormality of the five substitutions, that pachanguización of the parties that the pandemic has eventually brought, allows for massive rotation on the fly, once seen where the wind blows. Bale was left out, again, who has lost his focus because his game has been as invisible as his Spanish for months. Now it's a caboose.
Nor did Valencia change too much. Celades took Diakhaby, who emptied the magazine on one foot before and after the break, and put Mangala, Wass and Ferran Torres, number one in their promotion in almost everything. There is a general conviction (also in Madrid since he was a youngster) that he is the next footballer.
The party had a crumb, despite the adrenaline rush of pleading without an audience. He sent Madrid and waited for Valencia, who at home only have worse records than the Whites and Barça, but it was less than twelve teams.
Valverde started as a right outside, where his physical exuberance does not give him as much advantage, and the game did not go through him. He is a footballer with more field. Madrid tried almost everything inside, smelling little of the area, shooting from afar. And he let go of a goal in a good service from Benzema, nine mestizo, half point guard, half goal scorer, which Hazard crashed in Cillessen. Valencia responded to the race and with tusk. Rodrigo crashed a ball into the post and saw an interpretation goal annulled: a pass came from Soler that passed with Maxi, in an illegal position, and sent him to the net. Sánchez Martínez believed, with some logic, that the Uruguayan hindered Varane's clearance and left him in limbo. Soon after, Cillessen kicked out a forced shot from Carvajal and Courtois another distant from Kondogbia. By then the party had lost physics and chemistry. Madrid had a harder time deepening their soft and unemotional dominance, unbecoming of the pursuer, and Valencia greatly curtailed their deployment on the wings. Neither Gayá nor Ferran Torres were the expected threat. All in all, the Celades team seemed closer to the goal before the break because they had more powder upstairs.
Madrid opened gas in the second half. First without the ball, raising the volume and the meters in pressure. And then with him, but without initially finding the spaces. Hazard had more commitment than overflow, Mendy reached out with more thrust than skill, Benzema rummaged around the side but now he is also for something else and there are days when it costs him. Madrid tried an expensive approach, attrition, before an opponent more in line with the draw than at the beginning, and ended up showing the space, with a pass to Hazard's hole that crossed the Benzema network. Madrid will have to live on that society in the absence of auctioneers on the bench. The Belgian has more ingenuity than a goal.
Those twenty minutes pushed Madrid. Celades sought the helm with four changes in ten minutes, but the game was gone to his team in the first half. Eleven months later Asensio returned, that figure without finishing, and scored the second goal in a first shot after a good overflow from Mendy. As in his debut, in 2016, against Sevilla. Or in its league debut, against Real, the same course. Or in its premiere in Champions, against Legia. He definitely likes to get up early. He also participated in the third, a Benzema artwork, using right and left. Madrid is in their boots.