Real Madrid win Champions League as Cristiano Ronaldo double defeats Juve

Juventus1

Home team scorers

Mario Mandzukic 27

 

Real Madrid4

Away team scorers

Cristiano Ronaldo 20

Carlos Casemiro 61

Cristiano Ronaldo 64

Marco Asensio 90

In the end it came down to a sight that, by now, everyone in football should be familiar with Cristiano Ronaldo – gelled hair, polished teeth, magic in his boots will never forget the night he scored the 600th goal of an almost implausible brilliant career. It was the moment everyone knew the Champions League trophy on its way back to the Bernabéu and once again, that the four-time Balon d’Or winner had left his imprint all over another final.

Ronaldo had scored twice on a night when he also leapfrogged Lionel Messi as the competition’s leading scorer. No doubt he will enjoy that, too, but the real prize here was to be part of a side that has now lifted European football’s most coveted trophy three times in four seasons. Cardiff 2017 will fit neatly with Milan 2016 and Lisbon 2014 while Juventus reflect on their undistinguished record in the game’s showpiece events.

This was their seventh defeat in their past nine finals, including the last five in a row, and the second half here was a chastening experience for the champions of Serie A, culminating in them conceding more goals in one match than they had in the rest of the competition put together.

Casemiro scored one goal, albeit owing to a huge deflection, and the substitute Marco Asensio added the fourth at a point when Juve’s players had started to look in need of smelling salts. Juan Cuadrado, one of their own substitutes, had been sent off for two yellow cards and the harsh reality for Juve is that this has become a recurring theme.

All those black and white cards that were held up in the end accommodating the Italian fans spelt out the message: “The Time is Now.” The team from Turin played in the first half as though affronted by the statistic that no other side in the history of this competition had lost more finals. And, in the process, they also conjured up one of those that, yes, this is still the beautiful game. was rare moments when it does not feel hack neyed or overly sentimental to remember 

It certainly felt that way 27 minutes into the first half. Indeed, has there ever been a better goal in a European final than the improvisational volley that was witnessed here from Mario Mandzukic? Zinedine Zidane himself is on the all-time list for that spearing volley against Bayer Leverkusen at Hampden Park in 2002. Yet it is a legitimate debate and Mandzukic might even edge it given that his goal involved the ball going between four different players without touching the floor once.

Leonardo Bonucci was first, with a long, diagonal pass out to Alex Sandro on the left and, after that, it was just a blur of exhilarating speed, colour and movement. Sandro’s cross to pick out Gonzalo Higuaín was a beauty: a cushioned, left-footed volley on the run. Higuaín controlled the ball on his chest and flicked it towards Mandzukic. And then finally, it was the big man’s turn, teeing himself up and then twisting his body to launch himself at the ball with his back to the goal. Volley, chest-volley, chest volley: in total, five touches mid-air, left, right, left and right again. It was like something from a computer game and, at the end of it, theball was dipping and swerving into the top corner of Keylor Navas’s goal.

Perhaps Juve were emboldened by the fact Madrid kept only one clean sheet in their 12 games to reach this final. Allegri’s men passed the ball with great confidence before the break and made it clear within the first few minutes that this was not going to be a night for ploys of conservatism.

Yet there was another statistic about Zidane’s team and the player, more than anyone, who carries the team’s dreams. Madrid arrived in Cardiff with the best scoring record of any side in the competition– 32 goals from 12 ties – and Ronaldo, being Ronaldo, rarely lets a big game pass him by without making some kind of contribution.

To begin with, he had found it difficult to get too much of the ball in and around the Juve penalty area. All Madrid’s attacking players had. But when the game reached its 20th minute they suddenly came alive. The exchange of passes with Ronaldo came from Dani Carvajal, surging forward from right-back, but it was the driving run on the other side from Toni Kroos that unsettled the Juventus defence. Here was the rarity of Chiellini being caught out of position and Ronaldo’s low shot skimmed off Bonucci to takethe ball past Gianluigi Buffon.

It was a thrilling first half but, for Juve, what happened next was another ordeal. Even before they restored their lead Madrid had started pinning their opponents back into their own half. Juve had conceded only three goals en route to this final and they chose a bad night to lose that regimented defensive structure. Yes, there was a great amount of luck to Casemiro’s goal but the bottom line is that los blancos had taken control even before the midfielder tried his luck from 30 yards, just after the hour, and his shot flicked off Sami Khedira’s heel for a cruel deflection into Buffon’s net.

Three minutes later, Luka Modric scampered down the right, clipped a cross to the near post and Ronaldo turned in the goal that gave the remainder of the match an air of inevitability. There was still time for Sergio Ramos to help engineer Cuadrado’s dismissal and, finally, Marcelo crossed for Asensio to make it four. Gareth Bale was on the pitch by then and Madrid must be getting happily accustomed to these scenes.

source theguardian.com