6 talking points from Real Madrid’s dramatic 5-3 win over Atletico Madrid

Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid played out a 2023/24 game of the season contender in the Supercopa de Espana semi-finals on Wednesday.

The two La Liga giants shared eight goals unevenly (in Real’s favour) between them in a thrilling 120-minute long clash at Al Awal Park stadium in Saudi Arabia.

Here are 90min’s takeaways from Los Blancos’ 5-3 win.

Judging by the goal he scored on Wednesday night, the fact that Brahim Diaz only has 81 pace in EA SPORTS FC 24 is the biggest injustice in human history.

The midfielder went full Usain Bolt to collect a late clearance, racing away from Atletico’s desperate defenders to hammer the final nail in the coffin.

11-year-old primary school bullies up and down the country went full Leonardo Di Caprio clicking his fingers and pointing at the TV in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on Wednesday night when Antonio Rudiger twisted Alvaro Morata’s nipple.

There’s a sentence we never thought we’d write.

Atletico Madrid were once the most boring team to watch in Europe, with their games seemingly exclusively ending 0-0 or 1-0.

Now, things are very, very different.

Diego Simeone’s team have been scoring goals for fun this season, rattling in three against Real Madrid on Wednesday, as well as 39 in La Liga and a whopping 17 in six Champions League group stage games.

In getting his team firing in the final third, some sacrifices have inevitably been made at the other end of the park though. Simeone’s side are a bit of a sieve defensively these days – the five goals conceded on Wednesday being a prime example of that.

They’re finally fun at least, so we’ll take it.

Now officially Atletico Madrid’s record goalscorer, Antoine Griezmann surely needs to be considered a genuine all-time great of the game.

Disastrous spell at Barcelona aside – which was more Barca’s fault than Griezmann’s – the forward has been utterly remarkable since he burst on to the scene at Real Sociedad in 2009, providing his country and clubs (bar Barcelona) with quality on the ball and impeccable work rate off of it.

And although his team lost, Wednesday night’s game was yet another in which Griezmann showed his class. The now-32-year-old bagged an assist and a club-record 174th goal in the defeat, with the Cruyff turn past Luka Modric and Antonio Rudiger in the lead-up to the latter being yet another highlight to add to the innumerate ‘Antoine Griezmann – goals, skills and assists [flame emoji]’ compilations on YouTube.

It wasn’t too long ago that when you told someone that Dani Carvajal was 31 years old their reply was:

“No way, he plays like a 40-year-old.”

Now, though, Carvajal is back playing like the sprightly 32-year-old that he is.

The right-back was, as he has been for the last few months, really quite brilliant on Wednesday evening, scoring a goal and bagging an assist at one end, and winning 11 duels at the other end. He’s back to being one of the best full-backs in the world.

Real Madrid have had to contend with three serious ACL injuries to starting players in 2023/24, and yet last night they were able to bring the following players off the bench:

That is remarkable strength in depth for a team that we’ve been told, time and time again, are too thin to go and win the Champions League this season.

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