Three takeaways from Real Madrid’s UEFA Super Cup victory
By Ben Sundock
Zinedine Zidane is killing the game, humbly
Do you know why he’s smiling? Because all he does is win trophies.
Zinedine Zidane has now led Real Madrid to six titles in under two years. He’s simply in a world of his own at this point.
While a lot of the credit for this incredible run of success has been heaped on the players (rightfully so) Zidane deserves as much, if not more, of that credit. Two Champions League titles, two UEFA Super Cup titles, a LaLiga title, and a FIFA Club World Cup title in the span of about 20 months is totally unheard of.
All this success would go to anyone’s head, right? Not Zidane. The former Real player and French international has remained calm, cool, and focused throughout this historic run and has his team hungry for more.
“We know we’ve got a lot of talent and that with hard work we can achieve great things,” he said in his post-game press conference. “We’re very hungry, we always want more.”
“It was a near perfect performance. The first half was fantastic and then we struggled a bit at the end of the second. If we’d have got the third goal, that would have been it. We showed great character and hunger.”
There is hardly any time for Real Madrid to celebrate the triumph, as the team will head back to Spain and begin preparing for FC Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup on Sunday. Zizou is well aware of what lies ahead.
“We know that every game will be more difficult and we’ll come up against very good opposition throughout the season.”
“We want to give it our all and we’ve got the ambition to do better and better. Today was no comparison with the pre-season games. We were on it from the first minute to the last.”
Next: Toni Kroos, as valuable to Real Madrid as Cristiano Ronaldo