And so, after an engrossing encounter at the Vicente Calderon, thoughts turn to next Wednesday’s second leg at the Bernabeu. The tie is in the balance. Real Madrid will back themselves to get the win they need, but a score draw will do for Atletico. Their record at the Bernabeu this season? A 1-1 draw, a 2-2 draw, a 2-1 win. They’ll be confident. Will Real regret not making the most of their first-half dominance tonight? You’ll just have to wait and see. Thanks for reading and emailing. I’m off to cry about my stricken phone. Bye. We’ll leave the final word to Jezz Dresner. “Jezz called no goals,” he third-persons. “Called in on 17 minutes! Nice one.”
Updated
Full-time: Atletico Madrid 0-0 Real Madrid
It’s all over!
90 min+4: One last attack for Atletico. Gabi races down the right and crosses to the far post. It looks like it’s heading to Mandzukic, whose eyes light up, but only for a moment. Varane glances it away, and...
90 min+2: James cushions a ball into the path of Ronaldo, but his low shot from a tight angle is tame. Oblak gathers it easily.
90 min+1: There will be three minutes of stoppage time.
90 min: suddenly Real are under immense pressure! Torres turns and shoots in the area. Blocked. The ball runs to Suarez. His shot is blocked by Arbeloa and Atletico scream for handball and a penalty! The replay shows it hit Arbeloa in the stomach.
89 min: Marcelo is booked for barging into Torres. He’ll miss the second leg. A blow for Real. But this is nearly a bigger one. The free-kick is hoicked to the far post and Casillas is all over the place, Torres almost forcing the ball home. It’s a mass of bodies in there and Real desperately get the ball behind for a corner. It’s sent to the far post and Godin heads it into the six-yard box. Suarez tries an overhead kick and Casillas has to dive to his right and claw the ball away!
88 min: The corner is cleared. Neither side has come close to scoring from a corner tonight.
87 min: Torres gets on the ball for the first time and has a run at Ramos. He momentarily looks like he has him beaten, but then tries one more twist and turn and runs into Ramos. It’s not a penalty, but Atletico do force a corner.
86 min: The persistent Bale wins a corner on the left. Toni Kroos trots over to take it. It’s headed away as far as Modric, whose volley from 25 yards screams over the angle of post and bar.
85 min: Mario Suarez is booked for bruising the rampaging Isco over. He’ll miss the second leg. Meanwhile Alvaro Arbeloa is on for Dani Carvajal.
83 min: No. Marceloa heads it away for a throw, which means that Atletico can replace Koke with Fernando Torres. He couldn’t, could he?
82 min: Garcia wins a corner on the right. Is this to be the breakthrough?
81 min: Fernando Torres is lurking on the touchline. And he’s watching a magnificent run from Arda Turan, who beats one, he beats two, he beats three, four, and then he slips a ball through to Koke. Real are in bother, but Carvajal manages to knock the ball back to Casillas, who hacks it away for a throw. Siquiera lobs it into the area and the ball lands at Godin’s feet. Is he going to do it again? No.He swipes a hurried volley over from six yards.
Updated
80 min: Raul Garcia and Sergio Ramos pick up a booking apiece for behaving like small children.
78 min: You get the feeling that Atletico wouldn’t be too upset with a 0-0 draw. They haven’t lost in three visits to the Bernabeu this season, drawing twice and winning once, and this result didn’t serve them too badly against Chelsea last season. Of course, they’d prefer to be winning 5-0. “Koke has gone flat,” says Jamie Ayres.
77 min: Atletico make their first change. Mandzukic? No, it’s Antoine Griezmann who departs. Raul Garcia is on.
76 min: Real make the first change, Isco on for Karim Benzema.
74 min: Koke has struggled tonight. He’s given the ball away a lot.
71 min: Mandzukic is skating on thin ice now. Already on a booking, he catches Carvajal in the jaw with an elbow. Real want him off. Ramos shoves him in the chest. The referee waits a while and eventually decides a free-kick will suffice. Simeone should take Mandzukic off. This referee has been lenient, but he’s surely one foul away.
69 min: Real open Atletico up on the left. Marcelo pops a pass into the area for Benzema and he’s in the clear, all alone in the middle. But he doesn’t realise it! Instead of turning, shooting and surely scoring, he tries to flick the ball to Ronaldo and Atletico are able to recover. Ronaldo can’t bundle his way through, Bale’s shot is blocked, Ronaldo is squeezed out a second time and eventually the ball is hacked clear by Godin. What a waste from Benzema.
66 min: Ronaldo is penalised for handball on the right. Atletico demand a yellow card, but this isn’t La Liga. “I know it’s a hackneyed point, but surely the official on the line should have seen the punch?” says Jamie Ayres. Who knows what they were looking at?
65 min: A lull.
63 min: Mandzukic is down, clutching his head after a clash with Varane on the left. The Croatian striker glares at the Serbian referee.
62 min: Here is the biggest understatement of the day: Dani Carvajal is lucky the referee didn’t spot him digging a right fist into Mandzukic’s stomach off the ball.
61 min: Siquiera’s volley from 20 yards is blocked by Bale. Atletico are starting to work some nice combinations down their right.
60 min: Gabi finds Arda on the right. He skips easily round Ramos and crosses, but Griezmann can’t hook his foot around the ball.
59 min: There has been a goal in Turin. Find out who scored it here.
58 min: Ronaldo’s shot from the left is deflected wide for a corner. Atletico will defend it with 10. The blood hasn’t stopped flowing. Nothing comes from the corner, though.
57 min: Kroos drives one goalwards from 25 yards. It’s straight at Oblak.
56 min: “Just to show how unbiased I am I would like to say that Ramos did not intentionally elbow Mandzukic,” says JR in Illinois. “Of course that is literally the first time I have ever seen Ramos not try to injure an opponent in a challenge.”
55 min: Mandzukic is back, chest puffed out, eyeing Ramos as he returns. He waits 30 seconds before swinging an elbow in Varane’s direction. That’ll calm him down.
54 min: Mandzukic is getting a new shirt. He’s not back yet.
53 min: Mandzukic is off the pitch getting treatment. Watch this space.
51 min: Griezmann is starting to buzz, which could be a problem for Real. He pings a diagonal ball from left to right and Ramos heads it away from Manduzkic, the Real defender catching the Atletico striker in the face with an elbow for good measure. Mandzukic is down and when he’s up, he’s furious with Ramos. He has a point. The evidence he’s showing the referee is that blood is streaming from his nose. It was certainly an elbow from Ramos, but I don’t think it was deliberate. He was looking at the ball and had to use his arms to lever himself off the ground. He didn’t really throw it in Mandzukic’s face.
Updated
49 min: Fernando Torres is warming up. Is this game made for him? He scored twice at the Bernabeu in January. Perhaps. But maybe not yet. Atletico are starting to click. Juanfran spins away from James on the right and crosses, but Arda heads just wide from 12 yards. Atletico have done more attacking in these four minutes than they managed in the entire first half.
48 min: Atletico have started forcefully, trying to press and push more than they did in the first half.
46 min: The second half begins.
Naughty Sergio! Television replays show that Sergio Ramos had a sly kick at Koke, who decided to look at him with pity instead of reacting. It was a look that said ‘you are a 29-year-old adult, Sergio’.
Half-time: Atletico Madrid 0-0 Real Madrid
With Sergio Ramos still down, the first half draws to a close. I assume he’ll be okay, but he’ll need some treatment on that injury. Real will hope he recovers. He has been excellent. And Real have been excellent. They have been dominant since the first minute and really should be ahead. They just need one of these chances to fall to Ronaldo. He won’t miss.
45 min+1: The threat from Atletico has been minimal but they have had moments here and there. Siquiera crosses from the right and Griezmann gets in front of Ramos and heads over. Here’s a worry for Real, though: Ramos is down with a head injury.
43 min: Jan Oblak has been Atletico’s best player. They make an abject mess of a convoluted corner routine and suddenly they’re in huge trouble as Real break. Gareth Bale Rapahel Varane storms up the right and wheeches a low cross into the area. It’s just too far ahead of Ronaldo, who was unmarked, but it reaches Benzema. He’s tackled, but it comes to James, who has a dribble, followed by a shot that Oblak pushes away. The danger isn’t over, though. A cross from the right finds Benzema unmarked at the far post, but he can’t get over the header and the ball loops over the bar.
42 min: Koke drifts a ball into the area from the left. Varane heads it behind, a little unnecessarily. There didn’t appear to be much danger for Real.
40 min: Modric finds a yard of space 20 yards from goal. His shot flies a yard or two over the bar.
Updated
37 min: After all their dominance, Real almost press the self-destruct button. A dreadful clearance from Ramos puts Real into a world of bother and Gabi heads the ball forward to Griezmann, on space on the edge of the area. He has to turn and shoot quickly, though, because he’s under pressure from two defenders, and Casillas makes a save low to his left. But what was Ramos thinking of there?
36 min: James Rodriguez guides a free-kick into the Atletico area from the left. It skims off an Atletico head and drops behind for a corner on the right. Kroos’s corner is headed away as far as Rodriguez, on the edge of the area. From there, something very special almost happens. His first touch looks to have him in bother, with Atletico players, converging upon him, but he improvises with a moment of magic, scooping a wonderful effort through the bodies with the outside of his left foot. It’s heading towards the bottom-left corner, until a vital intervention from Oblak. Varane tries to turn the rebound in from an angle, but his effort is blocked.
34 min: Siquiera wins another corner for Atletico on the left. Better, as Andy Townsend would say. Koke’s corner is whipped towards the near post and bounces horribly in the six-yard box, but no Atletico player can capitalise. A minor escape for Real.
32 min: Diego Simeone is out by the touchline, waving his arms, imploring the Atletico fans to raise the volume even more. I’m not sure if that’s humanly possible.
31 min: The corner is a waste, an easy take for Casillas, who instantly sets Real away on the counter. Ronaldo speeds into the area from the right but a heavy touch forces him wide and his low cross is cleared. But Atletico aren’t out of the woods yet. Far from it. Moments later, no one closes Bale down and he lets fly with his left foot from 25 yards. It swerves awkwardly but Oblak flings himself to his left to deny Bale again.
Updated
30 min: Atletico get into their groove up front for the first time in a while. Griezmann feeds Siqueira on the left and his cross is deflected behind for a corner.
29 min: Real are sending a lot of crosses into the Atletico area, but they haven’t been good enough yet.
28 min: In fact, Real probably would have had that final sorted out far sooner than they did if they had Ashley Young.
27 min: “Angel di Maria was the real difference between these two sides in Lisbon, despite the late appearance of the self-styled Messiah who took the penalty once Atletico were down and out,” says Justin Kavanagh. “Whatever happened to Angel di Maria then?”
He’s no Ashley Young.
26 min: Benzema gets on the ball 30 yards from goal. He’s immediately surrounded by four Atletico players. “Sorry to hear of your sad loss,” says Nick Watson. “However, I was under the impression that we can now track down our lost mobiles and simultaneously cause them to self-destruct. Have you not tried this option yet???”
23 min: Atletico counter and Koke tries to play the ball through to Mandzukic. Momentarily he looks like he’s in the clear; before he knows it, Raphael Varane is gliding past him. Varane was winning that race so easily he had time to stop and give Mandzukic a wave, like the time a young Clark Kent outpaced a train.
Updated
22 min: Ronaldo thumps the free-kick straight into the wall.
Updated
21 min: Marcelo drives inside and has his heels clipped by Gabi. Ronaldo will have another go with a free-kick.
19 min: Bale barges Juanfran as the ball runs behind for an Atletico goal-kick. No one of an Atletico persuasion is impressed. The referee calms things down.
17 min: Bale twists and turns and writhes past Siqueira on the right, before stabbing a cross into the six-yard box. The diving Godin heads it behind for a corner. It comes to nothing. “Ronaldo and Simeone are going hair gel to hair gel tonight in the best manger vs player matchup in whole CL gelato,” says Jezz Dresner. “Who will face the greatest rufflement? No goals tonight I reckon Ramos doesn’t look like anything is getting through him tonight and Athletico are being themselves. The game is settling into a thick unmoving hair gel pattern rather than the slop in your eyes rainy version.”
16 min: A hoofed clearance from Varane almost turns into something brilliant for Real. Miranda allows the ball to sail over his head and you can’t do that with Ronaldo around. Ronaldo scoots on to it, facing Miranda up on the left of the area. He lays it inside to James, but Atletico survive.
14 min: Arda whips the free-kick into the area and Ramos has to head it behind for a corner on the left. Atletico are building some pressure for the first time, but Casillas punches the corner away.
13 min: Atletico win a free-kick on the right, Arda Turan hauled over by Marcelo. The crowd screams.
12 min: Carvajal, who appears to be everywhere, lopes inside and slips a ball into the area for Bale. He dinks a cross into the six-yard box, looking for Ronaldo, but it’s scrambled away. A goal appears to be on the cards.
10 min: Ramos makes a superb challenge to stop a Mandzukic charge down the right, but then he’s penalised for going over the top in a 50-50 with Gabi. Good to see they were both paying attention in the tunnel, then.
Updated
9 min: There’s that famous Ronaldo pose, the hands on the hips, the puff of the cheeks, the intense glare, and the long run-up. He strikes the ball hard and low, through the wall, and it bounces just in front of Oblak, who plunges down to his right to hold on to Ronaldo’s awkward effort.
8 min: Mandzukic commits his third foul of the evening. Already. He’s pushing it. Real, meanwhile, have a free-kick around 30 yards from goal. A man with heavily gelled hair is standing over it.
7 min: Real pour forward again down the right. Benzema and Carvajal look to find a way through, but Atletico shut them down. Real keep possession, though. The ball is theirs at the moment. “Maybe Gareth Bale recognised you and ‘’stole’’ your wallet as a joke and he will come back after the final whistle and be all like ‘’ Oh Hey! That was a joke! Here have £100,000’’ !!!” says Sean McGurrin.
5 min: Real Madrid are all over Atletico here. The hosts look shaken. How impertinent!
4 min: Real are bossing this and they should lead. A mistake from the usually reliable Diego Godin allows Bale to race through on goal. He looks certain to score. Hearts are in Atletico mouths. The home fans are aghast. But soon they’re roaring their approval for Oblak, who spreads himself well to push Bale’s effort away! That’s a fine save, but Bale should have scored. Still, he missed one in the first half of the final last year, and that turned out okay for him in the end.
Updated
2 min: This is a confident start from Real. Ronaldo pops up on the right and plays a pass down the line to Carvajal, whose brilliant cross is just too high for Bale in the middle. Another cross, this time from the left, is headed away. The ball comes to Carvajal, who shoots straight at Oblak from 18 yards.
And we’re off! Real Madrid, all in white, get the ball rolling, kicking from right to left in the first half. They stroke the ball around the back for a while; the whistles are ear-splitting.
The referee has a word with the two captains, Gabi and Sergio Ramos, in the tunnel. Gabi furrows his brow and nods. Ramos smiles and nods. I wonder what he was saying to them. Play nice? A plea that probably fell on deaf ears. Whatever it was, we’ll find out soon enough. The players are out. “Atleti! Atleti! Atleti!” is the cry. Are you ready?
A sea of red and white at the Vicente Calderon, the Atletico fans holding their scarves high in the air. It’s cooking. The players will be out soon. “Could it be that Sepp Blatter stole your wallet?” says Tony Martins. “Or had one of his henchman do the deed? Seeing as how he seems to hate all British football journalists and likely wanted to disrupt your efforts at MBM this evening. Just saying.”
Updated
Anyway there’s some football on tonight. It will be fascinating to see how Atletico approach this. Last season they tore into Barcelona in the opening 15 minutes in the second leg of their quarter-final and could have scored more than once. This is the first leg, though. Will they go on the attack or will they play with more caution? Perhaps we got an indication in the Copa Del Rey. They won the first leg 2-0 at home and drew 2-2 at the Bernabeu in the second leg.
Miguel Delaney, A Football Writer, wants you all to know that he was the someone else in that story. And it’s true. He was. A true hero.
@JackPittBrooke @JacobSteinberg @lauriewhitwell @jonathanliew disappointed to be relegated in that piece to a mere "someone else".
— Miguel Delaney (@MiguelDelaney) April 14, 2015
“The fact of your twitter handle being posted right there in the big red banner screaming across the top of the MBM is just a bitter pill to swallow,” says Daniel Stauss. “Of course, I suppose you could check your twitter on a different device. I don’t know how this works, I’m not on twitter.”
I can always check on a ‘computer’ or a ‘laptop’. Those are things that still exist, aren’t they? I knew I should have just got that Twitter chip implanted into my brain when a sharp-suited, slick-haired, fast-talking gentleman offered me “the opportunity of a lifetime”.
“Sorry to hear about your phone and wallet,” says Magnus Lind. Thanks, Magnus.
“It’s so much hassle trying to replace everything,” he continues. “Let’s hope you get to MBM a classic Madrid derby to ease your pain. I want Real Madrid to get hammered and Cristiano to cry. I know it probably makes me a bad person but i do like it when he cries. For some weird reason.”
Whoa! That email started out so pleasantly and then look! I quite like Cristiano Ronaldo. He’s amusing.
I don’t think you understand my pain. I can’t take any selfies at the moment. I don’t think you understand my pain. You don’t know me. What is the point of a selfieless life?
Losing the wallet hasn’t really bothered me. Losing my phone, though. It’s killing me thinking about all the group messages - all the friendly text message banter - I’m missing with the lads on Whatsapp. What have we become? It’s driving me mad. If I see something funny in the street, I can’t take a picture of it and send it to 17 people with the caption ‘LOL look at this’. I can’t tweet. I haven’t done a phone tweet since 8.15pm last night. Just let that sink in for a moment. It’s 2015 and I haven’t tweeted a Twitter phone tweet today. Not once. What a square.
The teams!
Atletico Madrid: Oblak; Juanfran, Miranda, Godin, Siqueira; Suarez, Gabi; Arda, Griezmann, Koke; Mandzukic. Subs: Moya, Tiago, Raul Garcia, Gamez, Gimenez, Niguez, Torres.
Real Madrid: Casillas; Carvajal, Varane, Ramos, Marcelo; Modric, Kroos, James Rodriguez; Bale, Benzema, Ronaldo. Subs: Navas, Pepe, Arbeloa, Illarramendi, Khedira, Jese, Isco.
Referee: Milorad Mazic (Serbia).
Updated
Preamble
Hello. What can you achieve in a few seconds? Leaving aside the obvious answer – it must be so tempting – probably not much. Most things in life take a while. I found that out last night. I was playing football, the game finished at 9.10pm, I walked over to the side of the pitch, I looked in my bag, I rustled around my bag, I rustled a bit harder, I shook it, I peered inside and then there was that sinking feeling. Phone gone. Wallet gone. A disaster. I used someone else’s phone to call the bank and cancel my card by the side of the pitch, while the next game was going on, but the call kept cutting out.
“Ah ... hello ... yes, I was just on the phone to one of your colleagues about cancelling my ca...”
Click. Line dead. Dial again.
“Er, yes, erm ... I think I was talking to you just there ... my card has been stolen and”
Click. Line dead. Dial again.
We got there in the end. But I watched a lot of the next match. I had not been planning to watch a lot of the next match, but I watched a lot of the next match. To be fair to them, Dulwich Destroyers were pretty good.
Card cancelled, it was off to the nearest police station. A fifteen minute walk. An hour-long wait to speak to someone. A sympathetic chat with the police officer who was working the shift on his own. I got home at one in the morning, had a shower, went to bed, lay awake in the dark for half an hour, seething and fuming and plotting all types of revenge, and eventually fell asleep at around 3am.
A wallet contains a lot. There are some things I can’t replace yet, because I don’t have a card, and calling the various people I need to call has proved tricky without a phone. Though I did have a lovely IM chat with my phone provider’s website this morning. The modern world, eh? But it still took a while. Most things take more than a few seconds to resolve.
And do you want to know the worst thing? We lost the match. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Still, football. How many seconds does it take to score a goal? One second, that’s how many. Take the Champions League final in 1999. Bayern Munich led from the sixth minute until the 91st minute. One second Manchester United were losing, the next they were drawing. Two minutes later they were winning, the Treble was theirs and Alex Ferguson was on his way to becoming a knight of the realm. Two minutes to become Siralex. The greatest achievement of his life, a season’s work, all of it defined by 120 seconds. It’s at this point that I’m contractually obliged to say football, bloody hell. Football, bloody hell.
Cast your mind back to last season’s Champions League final. Atletico Madrid had a few choice words to say about this maddeningly cruel sport on that May evening in Lisbon. They were 120 seconds away from pulling off one of the all-time great shocks. Leading 1-0 as the match ticked into stoppage time, they could smell victory, they could picture themselves lifting that big-eared trophy for the first time in the club’s history. They had punched above their weight all season, incredibly winning the title ahead of Spain’s big two, and now their remarkable run was going to continue on the grandest stage of all.
Then Real won a corner. Then Sergio Ramos scored. Atletico had gone so close to writing their names in history and now they simply found themselves repeating it. Forty years after conceding with 20 seconds to go against Bayern in the final, it had happened again. In a split-second, history was altered, and soon Angel Di Maria was zigzagging through the tired Atletico challenges and Gareth Bale was heading in the second for Real in extra-time. It finished 4-1. No first title for Atletico; La Decima in Real’s gleeful clutches at long last.
It was a sickening blow for Atletico, but they have picked themselves up off the canvas. There’s no chance of a Diego Simeone side feeling sorry for itself and Atletico have dominated Real this season. They beat them in Spanish Super Cup, they have done the double over them in the league (2-1 at the Bernabeu, 4-0 at the Vicente Calderon) and they knocked them out of the Copa del Rey. Six matches, four wins, two draws, 12 goals scored, four conceded.
Will the run continue? Atletico certainly appear to have Real’s number. Real could try to password-protect it or jumble it up, but Atletico look like they would soon crack the code. Yet Real have Cristiano Ronaldo. They have James Rodriguez. They have Karim Benzema and Gareth Bale and Toni Kroos and Luka Modric and they are Real Madrid. Despite everything that has happened this season, that has to count for something.
Whatever the outcome of this quarter-final, it will take 180 minutes - or perhaps more - to separate these two sides. But it might only take a second to settle it.
Kick-off: 7.45pm in London, 8.45pm in Madrid.
