Estudainte

Alessandro Delli Colli
Mr. Chicas
Newspaper
09/03/12

Spanish Super Cup
This past August the eternal rivals Barcelona F.C. and Real Madrid C.F. faced each other in the two-legged final of the30th edition of the Spanish Super Cup. This cup is played each year between the winner of La Liga (Real Madrid) and the winner of the Copa del Rey (Barcelona.) Real Madrid have crowned themselveschampions of the Super Cup nine times, only overpowered by the ten championships of Barcelona, who had won the last three Super Cups before this last one.
Real Madrid definitely came off as the underdogof the two but with their brand new player, the Croatian midfielder Luka Modric, for whom the whites paid around $47million and could only play the second leg of the Supercup, anything was possible.But Barca didn’t stay behind in the transfer season, they bought two players, the Spanish left back Jordi Alba and ex Arsenal midfielder Alex Song.
The first leg was played in Camp Nou, home of the“Blaugrana” side in Barcelona where several months before, Real Madrid beat Barca 2-1 in their La Liga match, which practically crowned the “whites” champions. This time Cristiano Ronaldo didn’tthink twice before striking the net 10 minutes into the second half with a beautiful header. Luckily for Barcelona, Barcelona was quick to tie the match and score another two goals before the 85th minuteof the match (Pedro 56’, Messi 69’, Xavi 78’.) Everything looked quite clear with the “cules” taking an almost irreversible 3-1 lead to the Santiago Bernabeu (Real Madrid’s stadium) but anunforgivable mistake by the Barcelona goalkeeper, Victor Valdes, gave Angel Di Maria an easy goal just before the end of the match to leave things 3-2. A rather favorable score for Real Madrid, because goals asvisitors count more than home goals when two-legged tournaments come about.
Only 10 minutes into the second and final leg of the Supercup, Real Madrid striker Gonzalo ‘Pipita’ Higuain was able...