From his glass cell on the eighth floor of the Santiago Bernabéu, Girona’s coach, Míchel Sánchez, could make out Yan Couto way down there: he was the one with the pink hair in tears. This had been all set up to be their moment, history there to be made, a future too, but in the end it had just been too much. Real Madrid had been too much.
The man who came to console Couto when at last it was over certainly had: at full-time Vinícius Júnior approached and put an arm around his countryman, as if apologising for what he had done; for 77 minutes he had put him through the spin cycle.
