7 hours ago
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27 min: Vinícius powers out of defence with a diagonal run. But Lamine Yamal can match him for pace and nicks the ball off his toe before he can advance into the Barcelona half.
25 min: Carlo Ancelotti is booked. If the referee was hoping for a quiet night, it looks to be in vain.
23 min: England’s Jude Bellingham now makes a damaging run in behind the Barcelona back line and suddenly it’s the Catalans that are severely stretched. The ball is worked back for Garcia to have a shot from the edge of the box, that is blocked.
20 min: Close! Raphinha whips in a good set-piece from the Barcelona left. Koundé gets up and powers a header goalwards that is dropping in under the bar – Courtois tips it over. On the touchline, Carlo Ancelotti is not a happy man. His team are clearly second best at the moment.
18min: Lamine Yamal cuts in from that right wing and smacks a low left-footed shot that sneaks fractionally past Courtois’s far post! He’s the brightest spark on the field right now.
15min: Rodrygo dribbles into an advanced position for Real, on their right wing, but the move breaks down and Barça break at lightning-quick speed. Raphinha crosses for Ferran Torres and some desperate defending solves an urgent problem for Real Madrid.
12min: Lamine Yamal makes a bright run down the right for Barcelona. The score is nil-nil.
“I’d love to watch the game but a 10pm kick-off is getting a bit too near my bedtime,” emails Mark. “How do the players put up with it? It must be hard to be at your peak performance level so late in the day. Good night.
“P.S. Well, if the game is exciting enough I might be able to stay up for it...”
9 min: A few gremlins in the machine tonight, I’m afraid to report, and I’m unable to watch the live match. Rest assured I’ll keep you updated with all the key events though …
2min: Apologies, a few technical issues here, please bear with me.
First half kick-off!
Here we go.
“There are still no events for this match,” states the live page on the official Copa del Rey website. Oh, you couldn’t be more wrong.
So did Barney Ronay, in typically excellent fashion:
“Pick a card. Any card. No. Not that one. Wait. Keep your eyes on the ball. The glass. Hang on.”
Real Madrid were really not very good against Arsenal in the Champions League a couple of weeks back.
Sid Lowe reflected on their exit:
Teams
Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé has to make do with a place on the bench while the 18-year-old wunderkind, Pau Cubarsí, starts for Barcelona.
Real Madrid: Courtois; Vázquez, Asencio, Rudiger, Mendy; Tchouaméni, Ceballos, Valverde, Bellingham; Rodrygo, Vinícius. Substitutes: Lunin, Gonzalez, Alaba, Mbappé, Modric, Guler, Endrick, Vallejo, Garcia, Brahim Díaz.
Barcelona: Szczesny; Koundé, Cubarsí, Iñigo Martínez, Martín; Pedri, De Jong, Olmo; Lamine Yamal, Raphinha, Ferran Torres. Substitutes: Ter Stegen, Araujo, Gavi, Ansu Fati, Iñaki, Torre, Christensen, Fermin, Victor, Eric, Fort.
What a game this is shaping up to be, by the way.
Preamble
“Faced by rumours in the last few hours, we wish to communicate our team has never proposed renouncing playing the final,” Real Madrid said in a statement released late last night before this high-stakes encounter against Barcelona. “Our club understands that the unfortunate and inappropriate declarations made by the referees assigned to this game, 24 hours before the final, cannot stain a sporting event of global significance.”
Hardly a serene buildup, then, but here we are. Real’s confirmation that they would grace us with their presence capped a day of uncertainty on Friday after the appointed referee, Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea, spoke of repeated criticism aimed at him on Real Madrid’s TV channel and by the club’s fans. “When a child goes to school and people tell him his father is a thief, it’s messed up,” he said in a press conference.
Real Madrid consequently cancelled the pre-match pleasantries in protest, but we do have a game on, and it promises to be extra-spicy. Sid Lowe has the full story of that contentious buildup, and kick-off will be coming up at 9pm UK time.
Vamos!
