Real Madrid players are really good at kicking soccer balls. This much is obvious. Of course they are good at kicking soccer balls. They play for Real Madrid, after all.
Soccer balls are not the only things Real Madrid players are good at kicking, however. As proof, watch Marcelo, Luka Modric and Mateo Kovacic tooling around with a tennis ball.
For 50 glorious minutes, Ali Khaseif was a magnificent wall, stopping anything and everything thrown his way. The world’s greatest goal scorer on the world’s most expensive team had shot after shot parried away. Then, the goalie got hurt, had to come off and Real Madrid immediately took advantage on the way to a 2-1 win over Al Jazira in the Club World Cup on Wednesday.
A meeting between third and fifth in La Liga turned into a rout inside the first half with Real Madrid racing to a 5-0 lead on Sevilla inside the match’s opening 42 minutes. Nacho got the first, Cristiano Ronaldo added a brace on the day his fifth Ballon d’Or trophy was presented to the Bernabeu crowd, Toni Kroos struck the fourth and 19-year-old Achraf Hakimi scored his first La Liga goal for the club.
Real Madrid defender Dani Carvajal thought he was being clever. In the waning moments of a 6-0 victory over APOEL on Nov. 21, Carvajal decided to hold the ball instead of throwing it back into play. The referee didn’t like this time wasting and showed him a yellow card. It was Carvajal’s fifth yellow of the Champions League campaign, meaning he would be suspended for the Borussia Dortmund match, but he would be available for the knockout rounds, for which Real Madrid had already qualified.