06 March 2013, 06:52 PM IST
Football is cruel. But it's beautiful too.
The Turkish referee may have spoilt the Champions League last-16 second-leg match between Man United and Real Madrid which was turning into a game of active chess till the red card to Nani. But boy, it was an enjoyable night for a neutral follower.
Welbeck was like a prancing knight mesmerising the wrong-footed bishops of Jose Mourinho. Ryan Giggs was a queen shifting from kingside to queenside with effortless ease; Rafael was a rook well aware of which squares and rank was right for him. And Vidic was a bishop, showing his reach and range with high-quality headers.
But the night 'dawned' on Real: more specifically for Mourinho and Modric.
The former was game enough to admit that the referee could have de-cisively changed the game (with the red card) after United took the lead. But his substitution of Modric was spot on. Here was a maestro waiting to unleash his pawns in a complicated endgame! And how.
The long-range curl-in sidebar-kissing goal that Modric scored was a gem. Had it been scored by the Messis, Zidanes, Ronaldos or Rooneys, it would have been hailed in a royal manner. And then the clinical tap-in finish of Ronaldo meant that Real were not only pawn up but had two queens on the board!!
Still, United played so well that the Real king (goalkeeper Diego Lopez) had to find many escape routes to find a safe square till the 95th minute.
It started like a scholarly chess game of Kramnik where the Russian (as in Man United) was creating chances without giving any real ground to Madrid. It's called slow death, an own goal from Real un-derlined it. But then, the referee had other ideas.
United sulked (like Kramnik did in his WCC match vs Topalov) and paid a price for it in the form of Modric's strike. But they didn't show the mental fortitude of Kramnik and conceded the second goal.
Towards the end, the 10 vs 11 was like blitz chess, not perfect like the Anand-Gelfand World championship match - but more like a wild game between entertainers Topalov and Carlsen - which could have been decided by the referee's earlier blunder.
Fair play and justice are nice concepts. But I would any day trade it for the entertainment provided by both teams at Old Trafford.
My glass, without alcohol, was half full. Heartburn was its richly de-served after-effect!
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