Football neutrals like me braced myself for the 2017 Champions League final in Cardiff between Real Madrid and Juventus. You can’t really argue about both sides run to the final as Real Madrid defeated Napoli, Bayern Munich and Atletico Madrid in the knockout stages while Juventus knocked out FC Porto, Barcelona and Monaco. Real Madrid had a very strong attack with the world’s best player in their ranks, while Juventus boasted of the meanest defense in the competition, so it was a classic case of an unstoppable force clashing with an immovable object.
Can’t really say I enjoyed the opening fiasco by the Black Eyed Peas but I was eagerly anticipating kickoff and it was quite a game. Cristiano Ronaldo had been in the periphery for a while but as you’d expect for a player of his quality, he popped up with a brilliant one-timed finish after an exchange with Dani Carvajal. Mario Mandzukic grabbed scored what proved to be the best goal of the night with a sumptuous overhead kick that left Keylor Navas with no chance in Hell.
Going into the break level was a fair reflection of the proceedings, even though Juventus played better but a different Real Madrid turned up in the second half and I’m pretty sure Gianluigi Buffon would have been disappointed to concede a deflected effort from Casemiro’s piledriver. Two swiftly became three when Ronaldo anticipated Luka Modric’s cut back to fire a shot that beat Buffon, albeit disappointingly, on his near post. Marco Asensio drove the final nail into the coffin of the Old Lady, making Real Madrid to be the first team to retain the Champions League in this era.
With club football out of the way, all focus would shift to transfer speculation, and we will obviously wait for the Confederations Cup to offer us some distraction. At Arsenal, news of Kylian Mbappe has died down, so we will have to move on to the next speculation, till we get something concrete enough to be featured on the official site.
Sayonara.
Follow Gooner Daily on Twitter @goonerdaily. I’ll follow back
Visit Gooner Daily’s Facebook page.
Click on the “Follow button” to join Gooner Daily’s Mailing List
Leave a Reply