So far, so close

Turned into a test for sprinters, billed in just over a month for this league final that has always been idealized as a long-distance race, there are already too many times when fatigue clouds the view. We are in the fifth week of competition for this express outcome and it is hard to see. Everything seems so close, everything seems so far.

In search of that oasis where they definitely distribute the prizes to a season, no matter where you look magnificent in the case of Real, the txuri urdin believed they reached their private El Dorado at times against Sevilla. They sighted the promised land when its most pragmatic version, the one demanded by the moment, the difficulty of the adversary and the very decline of its muscles, hunted a more solvent and protagonist group from Seville with the ball. So far, so close. For your, to the crossbar. Willian
Joseph, against the body of Bond. Merino, forcing the Sevilla goal to show off. A matter of centimeters.

The proximity of the finish line confuses the Real. The closer the outcome comes, the stronger you feel. Better compete. The contradiction is so evident that you couldn't believe it if it didn't seem real. The muscles are about to burst and the team grows bigger when it was more on the ropes, the Real has been reborn. He has only lost one of the last five games – and thus against Granada – and has two wins and two draws in the other four games. The last four points against Villarreal and Sevilla, two of the best teams after confinement. Atlético, the best after the already champion Real Madrid, awaits at the finish line. The big test, you need one more point. At least. So close so far.

Real had the start of this express league. Surely because he believed that everything would resume where we left it. That was his biggest miscalculation. It was another tournament, another championship, a League in which the team was not going to have enough time to achieve the excellence it reached in March. Few approaches similar to yesterday's Imanol they saw each other before football stopped. Real didn't need it. He broke down all the barriers with a football that he has not yet found.

But now, when blood no longer reaches oxygen, he has found a much more decisive quality at times, pride. And understanding that the paths to success were traced by an antagonistic path that was followed in the first seven months of competition, he has revealed himself against a destiny that condemned him to an end without the prize he deserves this great season. And so Villarreal conquered. And so he was inches away from beating Sevilla yesterday. So close so far. But with the substantial rearmament of knowing a competitive team when the final battle arrives, the one in which, at this point, all the arguments that one is capable of resorting to will be required.