With the night running aground, the lockpick was found by Nico Paz, a 19-year-old youth player who takes his initial sips in the first team with the voracity of someone who knows well their scarcity. Madrid came and came, but the match was won by the jewel of La Fábrica with a long shot, a demonstration of total absence of shyness and distilled quality. At Real there are not many opportunities for the youth team and Nico Paz embraced his with a memorable goal that completed against Napoli the total number of victories in the first five games of the group stage, and the team’s first place, at that a tie was enough for that.
4
Andriy Lunin, Dani Carvajal, Rüdiger, Ferland Mendy (Nacho, min. 87), Alaba, Dani Ceballos (Joselu, min. 57), Federico Valverde, Jude Bellingham, Kroos, Brahim Diaz (Nico Paz, min. 64) and Rodrygo (Lucas Vázquez, min. 87)
2
Alex Meret, Rrahmani, Juan Jesus (Alessandro Zanoli, min. 86), Di Lorenzo, Souza, Franck Zambo, Lobotka (Giacomo Raspadori, min. 86), Zielinski (Elmas, min. 65), Giovanni Simeone (Victor Osimhen, min. . 45), Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Politano (Jens Ctrabajo, min. 78)
Goals 0-1 min. 9: Giovanni Simeone. 1-1 min. 10: Rodrygo. 2-1 min. 21: Jude Bellingham. 2-2 min. 47: Franck Zambo. 3-2 min. 83: Nico Paz. 4-2 min. 93: Joselu.
Referee François Letexier
Yellow cards Zielinski (min. 48) and Jens Ctrabajo (min. 89)
The youth player unblocked a match that when it started didn’t seem like it would ever need something like that. There was a moment when he summed up the point at which this team that Rodrygo now commands is. The Brazilian received in the center of the field, got rid of a mark with control and turned towards Meret’s goal. It was like he lit a flame. A growing murmur arose in the stands. He had a lot of ground ahead of him. Also some defense. But hundreds of fans began to get up from their seats. Someone already stretched their arms 20 meters before he reached the area. After a journey through dark territories, Rodrygo flies illuminated, and in his wake the tremor of imminence radiates.
That time it came to nothing, but only a few minutes ago the Bernabéu had tasted another portion of its trance. Napoli opened a brief crack in Madrid’s dominance. Kvaratskhelia gained a few meters on Carvajal and Valverde and sent a pass to the far post, from where Di Lorenzo kicked the ball towards the goal. Giovanni Simeone appeared there to push the goal. The disappointment was disconcerting. Because it did not correspond to the script of the game, and because of the scorer, Cholo’s son, an athletic symbol, scoring at the Bernabéu. But Rodrygo entered vibration a few weeks ago and maintains the frequency.
Only 79 seconds passed, including celebration, between Simeone’s goal and the moment in which the Brazilian scared away Chamartín’s discomfort. He stole Brahim, advanced and gave the ball to Rodrygo, who was stepping on the left side of the area. There he took a familiar route: he moved away from the goal towards the center as he approached the corner where the goal awaited him, the same route as the two he scored against Cádiz on Sunday.
After the emotions, the duel returned to the lane in which Real had taken it, with Kroos at the controls. The German had unfolded his maps for another lesson in field management. He listened to the left for a while with Bellingham, Rodrygo, Mendy and Brahim. The ball flowed, the players flowed in a disconcerting dance for the Naples defense. When that route dried up, Kroos raised his sight glass and pointed to the other side, with long diagonals towards Dani Carvajal’s advances. And when he had tilted Napoli enough towards that side, he went back.
Alaba appeared there in one of those to hit a cross to the head of Bellingham, who scored by entering the area on the run. English is the continuous background music of this Madrid, that Hey Jude sound that plays underneath while other voices join in: Vinicius when he was there, Rodrygo now, with six goals in the last four games, with 18 goals already in the Champions League, Madrid’s tenth all-time scorer in its fetish tournament.
Ancelotti’s team was evolving smoothly without the arrival of his old friend Walter Mazzarri on the Naples bench seeming to have much effect. The coach made his debut over the weekend with a victory in Bergamo against Atalanta, but at the Bernabéu he hardly gave any signs of anything. Until the break cut the thread on which Madrid was running, which returned to the field half dazed and found that Anguissa scored with formidable power a shot from hardly any angle, through a gap between Alaba and Lunin.
Shortly after, Anguissa himself stole a ball from Ceballos, who was losing steam, and Madrid’s breath was taken away as Kvaratskhelia entered the area escorted by two teammates to confront a single defender. Valverde deactivated that by sliding on the grass.
Madrid had lost its bearings, its bridles had slipped, and Naples took the opportunity to begin to hit back. Kroos was no longer holding the baton and Real began to put pressure on the lack of control, after Ancelotti refreshed the troops by introducing Joselu and Nico Paz for Ceballos and Brahim, who had collapsed.
Bellingham and Rodrygo squeezed the imbalances that were already appearing in Naples. The assault, with a certain aroma of the urgency of comebacks, ran into Joselu’s lack of focus. After failing to score a goal in Cádiz, against Napoli he kicked out a header into an empty goal and meekly placed a one-on-one in Meret’s lap. And when he finally finished an exquisite service from Bellingham, rather than celebrating, he apologized.
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