The athletic club wants to prolong this Sunday at the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh the idyll he maintains with the Spain Supercup, a competition in which he is the reigning champion and in which he has starred in some of his greatest feats of the last decade, against the fittest team in Spanish football, the Real Madrid.
Marcelino Toral’s men qualified for the final after coming back on Thursday against Atlético de
Madrid and Carlo Ancelotti’s men did the same on Wednesday in extra time against a reborn Barcelona that wore them down physically.
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Although Friday and Saturday were rainy days in the capital of Saudi Arabia, the forecast is that the sun will rise again this final Sunday. But the temperature will drop compared to what was in the semifinals, being below 20 degrees at the time of the final.
A duel without a favorite
After coming from behind in the semifinals against Atlético de Madrid (1-2), Athletic Club has chained three wins in a row against major rivals in the tournament after defeating Real Madrid (1-2) and Barcelona even less than a year ago (2-3) to lift the trophy in the 2021 edition.
The good run of the rojiblanco team does not stop there in a competition that is going to get better and in which they already won Barcelona in 2015 in a double match (4-0 and 1-1).
So, he appears in what is his tenth final since 2009, the fourth in less than a year, with five games in a row without losing in a Super Cup, in which he has won the trophy in the two previous editions that he has played. .
The Basque team faces the clash in Riyadh after having won their eighth consecutive semifinal and their thirteenth tie in a row in cup tournaments in rounds other than finals.
Because it is in the finals where Athletic is having its Achilles heel. Of the nine he has played in 13 years, he only won two Super Cups and lost five Cups, one Europa League and one Super Cup.
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To win on Sunday, it is more than likely that Marcelino will once again rely on the block that so brilliantly overcame Atlético de Madrid in the semifinals. Although his team turned the score around after making the four changes he carried out, three in one go, the coach ended up satisfied with the work of a starting eleven that kept up the type and beat the league champion at times.
And there will always be time for Nico, the last ‘pearl’ to come out of Lezama, to come in and revolutionize things on the pitch as he did on Thursday. Along with the little Williams, Mikel Vesga and Raúl García entered, and later Yuri Berchiche did, who had been out for almost nine months.
Athletic goes with everything
Alex Berenguer, Oier Zarraga, Oihan Sancet and Mikel Balenziaga had done their job. Although with less brilliance than captain Iker Muniain, the MVP of the match, and Dani García, a defensive colossus in midfield.
Athletic could perfectly repeat in the starting eleven that they put against Atlético, with the doubt of whether Nico will enter after his appearance in the semifinals. Or if, given the short time off, less than three days, Marcelino decides to refresh the team.
The Basque team has a certain spirit of revenge with Real Madrid after the two games between the two teams in December in which they conceded two defeats (1-0 at the Bernabéu and 1-2 at San Mamés) after having deserved much more.
Especially in Madrid, where he created occasions to emerge victorious. Those hard-earned wins that served Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid to add them to a list full of victories in the big duels of the season, serve as a warning to mentalize the intensity with which they will have to play to win the first title of the season.
The opportunity presents itself to achieve the twelfth Spanish Super Cup and leave the difference between Barcelona as king of the competition in one.
A tournament to which Ancelotti attached the utmost importance. There are no minor titles for a team that went blank last year and that, precisely in the Spanish Super Cup with the semi-final defeat against its rival in the current final, marked the end of Zinedine Zidane’s second stage on the bench and the goodbye of a legend like Sergio Ramos.
After seizing the opportunity to re-impose authority in a classic, the fifth in a row with a win, the wish of a squad hungry for success is to start 2022 with a title. Seven years later, ‘Carletto’ has it in his hand to once again win a title as coach of Real Madrid.
It would be the fifth and would become the eighth coach with the most conquests. His latest success dates back to December 20, 2014, in Marrakech, winning the Club World Cup against San Lorenzo on the day that closed one of the most successful years of his career, with a record of 22 consecutive victories for history, before a 2015 of collapse in which the absence of big titles caused his goodbye.
He will not have his gala team due to two heavy defensive absences. The coronavirus once again leaves Dani Carvajal out of action, who after a month off was returning to the classic, and David Alaba has very few options to play due to the muscular problem that he is dragging on.
Lucas Vázquez will be a novelty on the right side and Nacho Fernández will remain as Militao’s partner after the doses of suffering against Barcelona. The way in which Real Madrid took the classic, with a low block and lethal counterattacks, Ancelotti warns that he will not serve against an Athletic Club with a different identity.
It is time for Luka Modric and Toni Kroos to increase their prominence with the ball and give way to an identity that the white team also manages, whose problems came against teams withdrawn in their field that opted to join lines and increase their defenses to five men.
Waiting for the plan of a strategist like Marcelino, Ancelotti’s is clear with an offensive trident in which Marco Asensio will continue if he overcomes some slight discomfort. Otherwise, Rodrygo will enter after a new blow to Eden Hazard’s confidence without minutes in the last two games.
The attack will be completed by the fashionable pair of Spanish football: Vinícius-Benzema, the great threats for Athletic Club. The speed and the overflow of the Brazilian; French goal. The leaders of a Real Madrid that aspires to a title one year and five months later.
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EFE
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