“Personally, it’s not that I particularly like coming across Atlético Madrid,” Carlo Ancelotti said, but he has got used to it – even if he wouldn’t normally need to travel so far. The last time Real Madrid met their city rivals, they were defeated at the Metropolitano, a 10-minute drive from Valdebebas where they work daily. When they meet in just eight days, it will be there too. But on Wednesday they will meet 4,963km away in Riyadh– the first of three matches, in three competitions, in three weeks.
Like Turkey, Spain’s Super Cup is being played in Saudi Arabia. There won’t be many Spanish fans there but, unlike Turkey’s, it will go ahead. On Thursday night, Barcelona face Osasuna in the second semi-final but the four-team competition, among the first of the catalogue of sporting events sold to the state, when the former Federation president Luis Rubiales and then Barcelona player Gerard Piqué took it there in 2019, opens with a Madrid derby on Wednesday. That will be followed the week after by the Copa del Rey last 16, back in Madrid, and then the league meeting at the Santiago Bernabéu on 4 February.
