“We will play and then we will see,” Carlo Ancelotti had said, so Real Madrid did their part and by the end of an ultimately easy night, life looked good again. The European champions started this match as the 22nd best team in the continent, somewhere towards the bottom of a table that keeps everyone guessing and supposedly on the edge of a catastrophe, and finished it eight places higher and feeling like favourites again.
Madrid had been defeated by Lille, Milan and Liverpool, but there was time still and a revival to come and now a 5-1 victory over Red Bull Salzburg in their penultimate game lifts them back among the seeds for the playoff round. With one game to go, against Brest next week, it also leaves them a single point from not having to play it at all. Two goals each from Rodrygo and Vinícius and another for Kylian Mbappé means they still have a small chance of completing the first phase of this new format in the top eight.
In the end, in fact, Madrid may even be disappointed that they had not drawn even closer here: four up inside an hour, withdrawing Jude Bellingham with 30 minutes left and replacing Kylian Mbappé and Rodrygo 10 minutes after that, Madrid only scored one more and then conceded late; had they kept up that rate, they could have climbed still further, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund two and three goals away respectively. Ancelotti though was satisfied and rightly so: for all the pressure, all the pessimism, this was a night that put things back where they are supposed to be.
This was always likely to be an opportunity not just to secure victory but chase goals, to do something about that measly looking +1. In that seemingly interminable table, there were only two teams below Salzburg: Slovan Bratislava and Young Boys. Fifth in the domestic table, for the first time in 10 years they are not Austria’s champions; coach Pep Linders had been and gone; and the Champions League’s youngest team had won a solitary game – the only one in which they had scored. Eighteen times they had conceded, an invitation for Madrid to attack. Salzburg hadn’t played a competitive game for a month, and few expected this to be competitive either.
And so it was, even if to begin with that analysis appeared flawed. It was Madrid forced to defend first when Fede Valverde, filling in at full back, had to move fast to deny Oscar Gloukh and Dorgeles Nene then flashed a ball across the six yard box. Soon after, Mads Bidstrup’s shot deflected over from the edge of the area. And then Gloukh came in from wide and struck just past Thibaut Courtois’s far post. Salzburg had come to play, at least for a little while.
With their first shot, though, Madrid took the lead and a hold of the match, any threat fleeting and soon forgotten entirely. Fifteen minutes had gone when Vinicius delivered a diagonal pass looking for Jude Bellingham, arriving in the area, and while he could not bring it under control the ball ran through to Rodrygo to score the opener. A single shot carried Madrid five places up the table, from 22 to 17, and nor would it be a single shot or a single goal. There were more places to climb too.
Madrid had started now and on 34 minutes Rodrygo scored again. A gorgeous exchange with Bellingham, who set up the Brazilian with a neat back-heel, saw him sweep a superb shot in from the top corner of the area. Madrid wanted more, the chase on. Vinicius was booked for diving in search of a penalty just before the break – he will miss the final game against Brest next week – and then, just after it, they were given the third. Janis Blaswich controlled a back pass and bafflingly walked the ball straight back to Kylian Mbappé, who took it from him, muchas gracias, and rolled into an empty net.
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Vinicius was next. Released by Modric, he dashed up the left, cut inside and smashed in the fourth. The pace slowed, players rested, but it wasn’t done yet. With fifteen minutes remaining, Brahim Díaz and Valverde set up Vinícius to score his hundredth goal for the club, slipping the ball beyond Janis Blaswich. The chase was on, two more teams within reach, the next round virtually secure, but the last goal would belong to Mads Bidstrup, volleying past Courtois. +4 would have to do, and it would do fine.
