Sunday night’s final scene at the Santiago Bernabéu was the way a final scene should be. Like something from a war film or a western, a heist movie or the truest romance, Williot Swedberg just walked calmly through the chaos and the noise, nothing the defeated could do now. Some had fallen, others just froze: all of them left behind with only the realisation, watching in slow motion as he went, their fate sealed and his victory secured, the story finished even before he had. Suitably cinematic and so cool.
When did you last see someone literally walk the ball in? Here, of all places, it happened, and it was the perfect picture. An hour had gone when Swedberg, unseen, appeared like a shadow, providing a flick so subtle it wasn’t seen at first either and so soft it was like he was wearing slippers. That had deservedly delivered the opening goal, Celta leading 1-0. Now, into added time 19 years since they last won a league game here and having resisted the bugle call, the Bernabéu doing its Bernabéu thing, it was time to add the coup de grace.
Madrid had just lost their heads and been shown five cards in 38 seconds, Álvaro Carreras’s sending off leaving them with nine men, but they hadn’t yet lost the game. The clock showed 92.02, time enough for a final twist, another epic ending from the team and the place that sometimes feels like it can’t be bothered with any other kind, and the home goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois had a free-kick. Sending everyone forward, this was an opportunity, perhaps the last one, to launch the ball into the Celta area; instead, after a punt forward as aimless as their performance and so many others before, it ended up back in his.
Deep in the left corner, Sergio Carreira played the ball inside, cutting through the white shirts again, and Celta were running into the space. Madrid, open again, desperately chased, or some of them did. Iago Aspas played it to Swedberg, who nudged on Javi Rueda, still flying and leaving Fede Valverde on the floor. Reaching the edge of the area, Rueda cut away from Vinícius Júnior and gave it to Aspas, still better than anyone else at 38. Faced by three men in a line and another, Antonio Rüdiger, five metres behind it, Aspas looked one way and passed the other, slipping a lovely first-time ball beyond Bellingham.
And then the scene slows, defeat dawning on them. So this is how it ends. Six men in the frame, one strolling through it. Valverde has got up again, but there’s no way back so he stops. They all do. Bellingham, bamboozled, stands arms out. Wait, what? Vinícius, Tchouaméni: nope. And Rüdiger: beaten, bent double, hands on his knees, he peers forward as if wanting a closer look at their demise. Only Courtois can stop this now, but time has slowed and he hasn’t, sliding by instead. Swedberg, taken out by Madrid goalkeeper Andriy Lunin and not given a penalty last season, steps past him and walks into the net. Revenge is cold, the kick that kills them not a kick at all. Behind the goal, just visible, someone’s head is in their hands.
All that’s lacking is Swedberg getting on his knees and heading it in, some sort of sunset to disappear off into. 2-0. Focus fades, roll the credits.
Ah, yeah. That. “Dia de la Bestia,” AS calls it after Álex de la Iglesia’s gloriously silly 1995 film about a Basque priest trying to prevent the birth of the antichrist, referee Alejandro Quintero standing at the centre of the cover photo because, well, that’s where they always stand. The Day of the Beast is a farce and El Mundo Deportivo are enjoying it: “Real disaster: a nightmare before Christmas,” the Catalan daily cheers. “Panic breaks out,” AS write, while El Mundo’s headline sums it up in a single word: “Desperate.” El Pais calls Madrid “vulgar,” saying they have “lost it”. They certainly had. Carreras had got two cards in four seconds: first for a gesture, then for telling the referee “you’re so bad”. Nine seconds later, Rodrygo, squaring up to the referee, gets a yellow which could have been red. Valverde does too. There was a red for someone on the bench who turns out to be Endrick, a handy reminder that he’s there. Five cards in 36 seconds are followed by more confrontations at the final whistle and down in the tunnel there is more. Dani Carvajal, who hasn’t played, is having a go at Quintero – “and then you go and cry in press conferences,” he says.
Xabi Alonso says he didn’t like the officiating. He also explains that an early injury to Éder Militão hurt them, which is just about all he manages to say and which is no explanation at all not really, a herring of deep red. Fran García’s sending-off is as justified as it is stupid, Alonso’s live reaction on the touchline summing it up better than anything he can say in the press room afterwards: “Fran! For fuck’s sack Fran!” By then, Madrid were already a goal down, and they actually got better with 10 men. For an hour, they had done almost nothing. If Carreras’s yellow was swift, the goal that followed it was even swifter, Swedberg walking it in 22 seconds after the restart.
Something in that final scene summed Madrid up on Sunday, a portrait of powerlessness: a team picked apart, a manager whose position is ever more precarious. Against Athletic last Wednesday, Alonso had found accommodation with players, a compromise that calmed the crisis, or at least covered some cracks, before heading home at last. Four days later they returned to the Bernabéu for the first time in a month and lost. Winners in the clasico in late October, at the end of their last home game, a 4-0 over Valencia on 1 November, Madrid had been eight points clear of Barça. Unable to win at Rayo, Elche and Girona, they find themselves four points behind, a 12-point swing in 36 days. “Madrid are lost,” Marca claimed. Madrid have “no football, no ideas and not much attitude”, El Mundo said.
Alavés 1-0 Real Sociedad, Athletic Bilbao 1-0 Atlético Madrid, Elche 3-0 Girona, Espanyol 1-0 Rayo Vallecano, Real Betis 3-5 Barcelona, Real Madrid 0-2 Celta Vigo, Valencia 1-1 Sevilla, Villarreal 2-0 Getafe, Oviedo 0-0 Mallorca
Monday Osasuna v Levante (8pm GMT)
They did though have an opponent, even if opponents so often so easily forgotten. It wasn’t just the bad guys in that final scene, it was the good guys too. Madrid had a handful of chances: Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius escaped beyond Celta once each, while Gonzalo García headed an opportunity just wide. But, it often felt, their opportunities happened; Celta’s were made, a clarity and identity in everything they did. A young, superbly organised side, determined to play, not park the bus, they were superb. “A magisterial lesson,” Faro de Vigo called it, rightly. History made, down in the dressing room, La Morocha blasted out and pizza was thrown in the air.
At the heart of it, Borja Iglesias was immense, a performance bordering on perfection, but it had been all of them, the control startlingly complete, intelligence and structure in every decision. It is hard to remember the last time a team pulled another about the pitch the way Claudio Giráldez’s side did on Sunday, as if they were deciding Madrid’s movements too. The Bernabéu had whistled as the visitors played with them, frustration growing with every late arrival, white shirts getting there to find the ball had gone, if they got there at all. Repeatedly, Celta drew them in and stepped beyond, again and again until the very end, any hope of some epic finale gently, smoothly taken from them, Real Madrid’s players unable to do anything now but watch as Swedberg walked past unmoved by the madness, all else fading around him as he crossed the line.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Barcelona | 16 | 27 | 40 |
| 2 | Real Madrid | 16 | 17 | 36 |
| 3 | Villarreal | 15 | 18 | 35 |
| 4 | Atletico Madrid | 16 | 13 | 31 |
| 5 | Espanyol | 15 | 3 | 27 |
| 6 | Real Betis | 15 | 6 | 24 |
| 7 | Athletic Bilbao | 16 | -5 | 23 |
| 8 | Getafe | 15 | -4 | 20 |
| 9 | Elche | 15 | 1 | 19 |
| 10 | Celta Vigo | 15 | -1 | 19 |
| 11 | Alaves | 15 | -2 | 18 |
| 12 | Rayo Vallecano | 15 | -3 | 17 |
| 13 | Sevilla | 15 | -4 | 17 |
| 14 | Real Sociedad | 15 | -3 | 16 |
| 15 | Valencia | 15 | -9 | 15 |
| 16 | Mallorca | 15 | -7 | 14 |
| 17 | Osasuna | 14 | -6 | 12 |
| 18 | Girona | 15 | -16 | 12 |
| 19 | Oviedo | 15 | -15 | 10 |
| 20 | Levante | 14 | -10 | 9 |
