- Real Madrid beat Barca to win the Super Cup.
- Messi scores a brilliant free kick in a 2-1 defeat to arch-rival.
Lionel Messi against Real Madrid
Real Madrid won the 2012 Spanish Super Cup with a resounding 2-1 victory over Barca at teh Santiago Bernebeu. This was incidently their first victory over Barca at their stadium in over four years. As if gifting Di Maria a goal in the first leg wasn't enough, we gifted two more Real Madrid from actually minimal of pressure. Mascherano, Pique and Valdes all were responsible for those mistakes. A brilliant free kick from Messi reduced the deficit, but Barca couldn't find that crucial second goal which would have won them the Cup. Tito Vilanova started with Valdes, Adriano, Pique, Mascherano, Alba, Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta, Pedro, Messi and Sanchez. Meanwhile Real Madrid had Casillas, Pepe, Ramos, Arbeloa, Marcelo, Xabi Alonso, Khedira, Ozil, Higuain, Ronaldo and Maria.
Xavi and Busquets looks Dejected
Alves was excluded from the starting line-up after he complained about some discomfort in leg in warm up. In the 7th minute Valdes made a good save off Higuain after Marcelo put him through on goal. In the 11th minute Mascherano made a terrible mistake trying to clear a long hoof from Pepe, he missed the ball completely and Higuain was put through on goal who made no mistake with the finish putting Real Madrid 1-0 ahead. That was yet nother gift for Real Madrid. That goal really looked to have shocked to the players and they were struggling to find their usual control. It became really bad with Ronaldo making it 2-0 in the 19th minute after another defensive mistake. It was so shocking, first an obscure ball found Ronaldo, who did well to control, Pique did well and went to the goal line to clear any iminent danger, Ronaldo take the shot, which could have easily cleared by Pique but Valdes made the contact sending the ball into net. In the 22nd minute another mistake put Higuain through but this time Valdes made the save. In the 24th minute Real Madrid thought they scored a third but was correctly ruled out for a push on Mascherano. Our defense is all over the place first half an hour of the match. As if that wasn't enough Adriano was sent off after bringing down Ronaldo who was through on goal. In the 32nd minute Montoya was brought in for Sanchez. In the 33rd minute Mascherano produced a great challenge to stop Higuain from scoring, once again it was a ball over the top which had us scrambling. In the 37th minute Iniesta sent in a good cross from right into the box and Montoya was very close in getting on end of that. In the 45th minute we won a free kick which looked like too far away from Casillas' goal. BUt there stepped in Lionel Messi, curled the ball into the far corner of the goal to make the score 2-1. We immediately had two counter attack from Real Madrid with both Ronaldo and Di Maria shooting wide.
In the 62nd minute Pedro was put through by a long ball by Mascherano but Casillas made a brilliant save to deny the Barca forward. In the 69th minute Khedira ran through our defense but Valdes made a brilliant save to deny him. In the 75th minute Song came in for Busquets, had to say it's a very confusing message from the Manager. In the 76th minute Messi dinked a ball spotting a brilliant run by Alba, who took a heavy touch trying to take the ball past Casillas. In the 80th minute Higuain was put through and he had a simple job to finish it past Casillas, but he hit the post. In the 82nd minute Tello was put in for Pedro, who was the best player for Barca in the match. In the 92nd minute Messi put Montoya on goal but Casillas made the save. In the same minute Messi curled a shot just wide off the post. And that was the last action of the game and boy, we did came close to winning it.
School boy errors, that's the reason why we went down in this Super Cup. We were so poor in defense early on that I am not able to describe it. But the second half saw our boys coming back to it. Thechances for Pedro and Alba were really brilliant and should have atleast equalised for us. The positives from the match was the performance of Messi, Pedro, Montoyo and Alba. Montoyo gave a good performance and would have sealed his place as the back up for Alves with this performance.
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