Man United Won the Final Before the Final

Manchester United and Real Madrid met in a game of the friendly tournament International Championship Cup yesterday in Santa Clara, California. The match was a general repetition before the final for the UEFA Super Cup, which will be on 8th August in Skopje. Both teams will play a few more games before that match, but the direct game between them was the chance for the coaches to see what they can expect from their opponents in the final.

The score after the end of the regular time was 1-1. Both teams tried their luck after a couple of shots from a long distance. However, Jesse Lingard scored the opening goal for Manchester United in the 1st minute of the added time of the first half. Anthony Martial set up the goal. The Frenchman went past 3 defenders of Los Blancos in the box and passed the ball to Lingard, who made a simple tap-in. During the second half, Real Madrid’s new signing Theo Hernandez won a penalty for his team, which was converted into a goal by Casemiro.

Eventually, both teams had to decide the match with penalties. Surprisingly, there were more misses from the spot than goals. David de Gea only conceded once from 5 penalties! On the other hand, Manchester United’s players managed to score 2 penalties and won the game.

The Line-Ups:

Real Madrid (4-3-3): Keylor Navas (Kiko Casilla 46′); Marcelo (Alvaro Tejero 46′), Nacho (Manu 46′), Daniel Carvajal (Achraf Hakimi 46′), Raphael Varane (Luiz Quezada 46′); Luka Modric (Mateo Kovacic 46′), Toni Kroos (Casemiro 46′), Isco (Oscar 46′); Karim Benzema (Dani Gomez 46′), Gareth Bale (Francisco Feuillasier 46′), Lucas Vazquez (Theo Hernandez 46′).

Manchester United (4-2-3-1): Sergio Romero (David de Gea 46′); Matteo Darmian (Antonio Valencia 77′), Phil Jones (Chris Smalling 46′), Eric Bailly (Victor Lendelof 46′), Timothy Fosu-Mensah (Daley Blind 46′); Michael Carrick (Henrikh Mkhitaryan 46′), Marouane Fellaini; Jesse Lingard (Paul Pogba 46′), Andreas Pereira (Ander Herrera 46′ – McTominay 52′), Anthony Martial; Marcus Rashford (Romelu Lukaku 46′).

That was our first preparation game and I am very happy from what I saw. For me the penalties weren’t important at all. The important thing was that we competed very well today. We have a few more games before the Super Cup final and I think we will be ready for that game. Zinedine Zidane