Javier Aznar: Reflections on Failure & Resilience

It is an epidemic in this modern football of minimalist shin guards and undressed substitutes on the bench: slipping on the grass. At the Bernabéu, Marcao, Alexis Sánchez, Rodrygo, Fran García and Asencio slipped away in different compromised situations.

We don’t know who has the … blame for such an absurd spectacle, more typical at this time of an ice skating rink than a football stadium: whether it was the players themselves when choosing their cleats, whether it was the kit men or whether it was excessive watering. But the fact that footballers repeatedly fall to the ground on a field with a retractable cover seems like the height of a bad joke.

Madrid was whistled at different moments of the match for its usual mistakes and inattention, also threatened by Alexis Sánchez suddenly experiencing a second youth. Only a splendid Courtois avoided a setback at home that would have been fatal due to necessity against a Sevilla with ten players. Meanwhile, Xabi Alonso continues as Philippe Petit, walking the tightrope between the Twin Towers. The question is inevitable: how long can a coach endure this tension of walking along the wire?

On nights like this the Bernabéu doesn’t get angry: it gets restless. There is no sustained or veiled anger, but rather a distrust that sets in little by little and that weighs more than any whistle. The stadium knows how to read games and detect when a team dominates and when it simply survives as best it can. And this feeling of provisionality, of pushing through each week, is what ends up permeating the stands and setting the tone for the season.

Mbappé, for his part, equaled Cristiano Ronaldo’s record of goals in a calendar year. It is still a bad sign that the reasons for showing off at Real Madrid today are individual achievements: the Golden Boot, the Ditto Ball, Cristiano’s record. Symptoms, perhaps, of a team that slips when trying to walk together.

At the Bernabéu it was always understood that the big numbers came as a consequence and not as an alibi. First the team, then the history, and finally the individual records. When the order is reversed, something creaks, no matter how much galactic brilliance the proper names give off. And perhaps that is why slips, both literal and metaphorical, are more disturbing than necessary: ​​not because of the fall itself, but because of the suspicion that the team is on little firm ground.

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