Defending champions Real Madrid want to buy a ticket for the Champions League final again at Manchester City. As in the first leg, Antonio Rüdiger should unsubscribe top scorer Erling Haaland.
It’s been decades since Germany trained first-class defenders almost on an assembly line. Perhaps the best educational institution was once in Mannheim, because the Waldhof School gave rise to figures that the world‘s best strikers feared.
The brothers Bernd or Karlheinz Förster, Jürgen Kohler or Christian Wörns, as well as Dieter Schlindwein or Roland Dickgiesser, who trained here, had one thing in mind above all: eliminate their opponents as classic man markrs. “In my early years as a professional, the coach put me on an opposing striker and I followed him around the pitch for 90 minutes”, Wörns once said. According to the then generally accepted motto: And if he goes to pee, “Then you go to the toilet with me!”
Also physically on par with Erling Haaland
It was the motto that every youth footballer on German sports fields who was set up as a defender heard before the global triumph of the back four. Fortunately, football and coaches have evolved, but sometimes there are still games played at the highest level that revive the virtues of the past: Like Antonio Rüdiger in the semi-final first leg of the Champions League between Real Madrid and Manchester City (1: 1) fought the goalscorer Erling Haaland, reminiscent of the Kohlers, Försters and Wörns from before.
The 30-year-old Berliner stuck to the Norwegian, who was eight years his junior, like a burr. Rüdiger was not careless for a second – and naturally he was not above a duel, whereby his physical constitution (1.90 meters/85 kilos) benefited him to the duel against the otherwise unstoppable giants (1.94 meters/88 kilos) at eye level.
Sometimes a hotspur at VfB Stuttgart
The 57-time national player, who is considered to be set under national coach Hansi Flick with a view to the home European Championship in 2024, is almost completely absorbed in such tasks. He can bite into this job and play to his strengths, which somehow also correspond to his nature. “I was called a ‘warrior’ by my parents when I was a kid. If there’s a wall, I hit it ten times, but I get through it in the end. I’m a fighter,” Rüdiger described himself recently. By that he also meant criticism or even hostility towards himself because of the color of his skin. He knows racist incidents from his own experience in England and Italy.
Rüdiger has matured over the course of his eventful career: At VfB Stuttgart he was often noticed as a hothead at first, collecting yellow and red cards unnecessarily because he sometimes wanted to mess with everyone on the pitch. Meanwhile, he focuses on working on his opponent. Sometimes also verbally.
“I also love and need the mind games and the trash talk with my opponents, it’s just fun for me”, he said recently. In any case, he has found a way to stop the world‘s best striker with the natural phenomenon Haaland, who has 36 goals this season in the Premier League alone. The German received a corresponding amount of applause in the Spanish media last week.
Big praise from Carlo Ancelotti
“Rüdiger eats Haaland”wrote the Spanish newspaper “AS”. The newspaper “Marca” sneered: “Haaland was not present at the Bernabeu“- Grade three out of ten. Haaland’s 21 ball contacts and 13 passes were even surpassed by City goalkeeper Ederson. Rüdiger’s gala (Marca grade 10) was the basis for this, until Kevin De Bruyne’s world-class shot to make it 1-1 to a 1: hoping for a 0 win. “He had a fantastic game, you have to point that out“said Real coach Carlo Ancelotti.
Madrid you are “very good at it” been to stop the dangerous passes to Haaland, the promised said: “And we were strong in a one-on-one against him.” Rüdiger had of course noticed that his compatriot Toni Kroos in particular was helping him enormously because the midfielder was cutting off the supply lines for the blond striker.
It is considered agreed that Real’s number 22 will have to do the same job again in the second leg (Wednesday 9 p.m., in the live ticker at sportschau.de) if the record winner of the premier class wants to qualify again for the final on June 10 in Istanbul . “At the end of the day”Rüdiger already said, “we have the players, the experience and the cojones to go there and win.”
Also supports his goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois: Real defender Antonio Rüdiger
David Alaba is probably his neighbor
Rüdiger, who came from Chelsea last summer, has often been on the bench at Real in what has been a changeable season for him, but now he is set. For the second central defender, Ancelotti has to choose between David Alaba and Éder Militão.
The Austrian Alaba seems to have the better cards because the former Bayern star, like top scorer Karim Benzema and Rüdiger, was rested in the mandatory win against FC Getafe (1-0). That the Italy head coach at the weekend praised his backup central defense (“Militão did well, he played very well together with Nacho in defense”) was a clear indication that he was counting on others in the most important game of the season and thus probably also on “old German” man-marking virtues.