Ancelotti’s team, with a full infirmary, succumb to Mallorca in a tense showdown, complicating their league horizons
After appearing at Son Moix with a shattered spine due to the absence of Courtois, Militao and Benzema due to injury, Real Madrid returned from Mallorca on a stretcher. Carlo Ancelotti’s team, to which the saturated calendar bills a very high medical cost, suffered its third defeat so far in the league against the vermilion team in a tense game that indicated an ambush from the previous one, but which became more and more cloudy from the preface to the epilogue.
Decimated by the absence of three essential pillars for his good pulse in the territories, but also weighed down by Vinicius’s predictable and pernicious war against a team and a stadium waiting for him with the scythe at the ready, the whites gave in to the team of Vasco Aguirre, who won the battle with his guts and his head.
An own goal from Nacho, overwhelmed by the physical threat Muriqi represented, was enough for Mallorca to seal their fourth successive home win in one of the championship’s fortresses and overcome the task of chasing Barça against a Real Madrid with no free beds yet. to make it more complicated. the infirmary and stubborn.
Rajkovic, Maffeo, Gio González, Raíllo, Nastasic, Jaume Costa, Baba (Battaglia, min. 78), De Galarreta (Grenier, min. 92), Dani Rodríguez (Amath, min. 67), Kang-in Lee (Antonio Sánchez , minus 78) and Muriqi.
Lunin, Carvajal, Rüdiger, Nacho, Camavinga, Tchouaméni (Kroos, min. 70), Valverde (Modric, min. 64), Ceballos (Alaba, min. 70), Asensio (Mariano, min. 70), Rodrygo and Vinicius.
Ancelotti suffered yet another setback with the last-minute accident of Courtois, who felt discomfort in the adductor of his left leg during the pre-match warm-up and had to leave his place under the sticks to Lunin. The Italian changed another four cards compared to the eleven he faced Valencia at the start on Thursday. He mainly rebuilt the midfield, with the return of Tchouaméni and Valverde to an engine room from which Kroos and Modric came out, who touched in battle with the team, which was later confirmed by their coach. Upstairs, in the absence of Benzema, Rodrygo took the lead with the mission to bite a particularly hard nut in his field as Majorca.
Vasco Aguirre’s team has turned Son Moix into a bastion that Barça attacked with great difficulty and into which Atlético succumbed, without going further. The smooth functioning of the vermilion wall in their fiefdom is one of the main reasons why Majorca exceeded expectations in the first round, although on this occasion two fundamental pieces were missing from their mortar: Copete, sanctioned, and Valjent, recovering from a flu.
Mallorca did not suffer from these absences, who surpassed Real Madrid with great defensive discipline and maximum efficiency in attack. A serve from Rajkovic, a Muriqi haircut and a cross from Dani Rodríguez from the left before the first fifteen minutes had ended served to control the visiting defence, executed as a result of a dogfight between the Kosovar and Nacho that ended with friendly fire of the Alcala multipurpose over Lunin.
By this time, Vinicius had already starred in a few fights with the local defenders in a stadium inflamed against the carioca. Overwhelmed, he reacted by going to war alone, making life easier for a stony Majorca. The advantage bolstered Aguirre’s plan, which involved blinding the lanes, bottling Real Madrid on the inside and chasing the counter with Muriqi as the dovecote. The vermilion went off at half-time without getting a single shot between the sticks, an indisputable sign of the visitors’ lack of an antidote to their iron proposal.
He did not change the attitude of his Ancelotti battalion as they passed through the changing rooms, even though Vinicius went to the box next to the second yellow card after facing Hernández Hernández and with his head well off the ball. However, the Brazilian concentrated just enough after the break to trigger a penalty for bringing down Rajkovic which Asensio squandered by paying more attention to flattering the goalkeeper than adjusting the peephole.
With the post-dinner session still one-sided, Ancelotti took Modric, Kroos, Alaba and Mariano from the reserves to try to lubricate an attack that was suffering without Benzema’s oil, but Mallorca kept Real Madrid’s carburetor clogged in a match where the constant interruptions bereft of that frenzy that is an essential ingredient to the soup of comebacks.
Despite this, Real Madrid tried to the end, with more faith than foundation. A Rüdiger header at the buzzer could have meant the draw, but it went just wide. It would have been unfair, given both the merits of Mallorca, insightful and villainous, and the shortcomings of Real Madrid, of a cloudy and rigid mind.
Source: La Verdad
I am Shawn Partain, a journalist and content creator working for the Today Times Live. I specialize in sports journalism, writing articles that cover major sporting events and news stories. With a passion for storytelling and an eye for detail, I strive to be accurate and insightful in my work.
