The Week In Real Madrid: Smooth sailing at the Bernabeu

Any and every thing that can go right for Real Madrid has gone that way for them last week, Tim Stannard notes...

The week in five words

Could not have gone better.

What went well

Pretty much everything with Real Madrid hitting a five-way whammy - beating Wolfsburg in the Champions League, Barcelona going out to Atlético, drawing Man City in the semi-finals, overcoming Getafe in La Liga and then Barca crashing to a

third successive defeat in La Liga.

And real, actual effort only had to be expended in just the one of that heart-warming quintet for the Madridista massive. 

Despite Zinedine Zidane’s fretting that the away trip to Getafe in La Liga was set to be another away-day banana skin of the kind that has sent Real Madrid sprawling on its football posterior all too often this season, Saturday’s victory against Getafe in the Coliseum could not have been more routine with the players in the most polite ‘to-me-to-you’ performance on the ball to rack up the scoreline.  

But with La Liga still set for a few more twists and turns despite Barcelona’s current collapse, the week was all about the Champions League with the collective Real Madrid psyche suffering a massive split down the middle over the optimism of a huge comeback against a middling Bundesliga side and the more realistic hemisphere that knew that a single goal for Wolfsburg would probably spell the end of the club’s participation in the competition at the quarterfinal stages. 

The midweek ended up being a treble celebration for Real Madrid.

Wolfsburg were vanquished after a one-man show from Cristiano Ronaldo, Barcelona were ousted from the competition with a giant Nelson from ‘The Simpsons’ style ‘ha-ha!” and Madrid drew what they feel will have been the easier of the remaining teams in Manchester City, despite the platitudes of no tough games at this stage, etc. Not bad at all. 

What didn’t 

Aside from the Real Madrid coach driver taking four goes on a three-point-turn in the Coliseum carpark, on Saturday, life went pretty smoothly for Real Madrid.