You never know which Dani Alves is going to show up — the good elf whose free kicks are sprinkled with fairy dust, or the bad elf whose crosses sail into orbit (or dent the Stamford Bridge Shed trying), who flops and whines and collects yellows like baseball cards. But in a match of boy sprites (Messi, Xavi, Kaka — even Ronaldo seemed a little smaller, just a bit more feminized than usual), it was the mischievous good elf Dani who finally slew the dragon, making Ibra appear like the right call after all. That and Puyol, putting his body in front of every bullet fired. He can’t run, but he sure can catch up.
Seriously, though, Real looked very dangerous for about 20 minutes, and then disappeared. Manuel Pellegrini whipped out an Arsene Wenger protractor during the press conference to prove that Real was the better team. Barca will certainly need more than two points lead going back to Madrid in April — but ask Messi, Pique, and Abidal which team blew more bunnies in front of the goal mouth. It was Real at its best this year versus Barca at not nearly its best, and if you can’t get the result under those circumstances you should not say anything at all.
BTW: New hashtag on Twitter: #fillinginforray, started by The Run of Play. Because Ray Hudson was apparently replaced by someone whose brain had been completely hollowed out by bovine spongiform encephalopathy and then stuffed like a turducken with cliches. And he didn’t mention crickets once, perhaps because the game was too important. But not too important for GOL TV to show us their 30-second “exclusive camera shots” of players warming up along the sidelines while the action was going on.
(Image credit: foxspain/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)
Posted via email from Bob Lalasz: Surplus to Requirements
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