The delusional happiness of "crazy Toni", the anti Haaland: "It is always necessary to have a crazy person on the team"
Toni leaves the pitch, walks through the tunnel, enters the changing rooms and sits in the ticket office that corresponds to him. “Pff, I've never seen anything like it,” he mutters, broken with exhaustion.. Suddenly the music plays and more than 20 people look at him and ask him between shouts to get up. And Toni, fulfilling her wishes, dances, moving her body in the same disjointed way that makes her run, raising her knees to her chest.. Everyone celebrates his moves and Toni smiles because Toni, above all else, is “the happiest guy in the world.”
The scene was starred by Antonio Rüdiger at Anfield Road after Real Madrid's historic 5-2 win over Liverpool and it can be suspected that on Tuesday night, after drying up the feared Haaland at the Bernabéu, Toni was once again the center of joy for the Chamartín's wardrobe. “He played a fantastic game,” Ancelotti praised him in the press room.
“I am positively crazy,” the German defender confessed in an interview with this newspaper a month ago. And Rüdiger, positive and crazy, Militao's replacement for a day, eclipsed the best striker in world football. He appeared again and again under Haaland's arm, sticking his head between the limb and the Norwegian's body, disorienting him, bothering him, causing him the occasional laugh, but always beating him in individual duels.
The Norwegian, who had just scored 35 goals in his first 30 games in the Champions League and 18 in the last 13 in all competitions, shot three times on goal, was the player who touched the fewest balls in the match (only 21) and He had the worst percentage of success in the pass of all Manchester City. One of his best options could have come on a counter with space to run, his speciality, but Rüdiger, attentive, cut off De Bruyne's pass and celebrated the action as if he had scored a goal: waving his arms non-stop and shouting in rage.
EFE
“What a fight!” commented the German at the end of the game. Before, Haaland had been the first to hug him after the final whistle. And Toni, happy, returned the greeting with a smile, the same one he sent to Guardiola when the Catalan coach reproached him for a clash with Gundogan.
He risked his face in Warsaw
“It is magnificent and necessary to always have a madman on the team,” they confess from Valdebebas, where they adore Rüdiger. The former Chelsea player, a bet of the technical management last summer, won over the dressing room for his humility in the first weeks of the course, where Alaba paved the way for his teammates, and in the Champions League match in Warsaw. There, Rüdiger risked his head for Madrid. He attacked a high ball from Kroos, got ahead of the Shakhtar goalkeeper and leveled the game, returning to Spain with a gap in the forehead. “That action defines him”, they say in his environment. “I don't know anyone happier to be a Madrid footballer,” says a source close to the locker room, where they see him as “the most prankster of the entire squad.”
Precisely Alaba, his best friend in Madrid and the man who opened the doors of Valdebebas for him, has been one of those to blame for Rüdiger's success in recent months. The injuries to the Austrian and Mendy, and the regularity of the German have made him indisputable. He has started 25 of Madrid's 32 games in 2023 and not even Ramadan has slowed him down. “Ramadan is mental, if you think about it a lot, you're hungry, but I'm strong in the head,” he explained to EL MUNDO in April. A strict Muslim, religion has been one of the great pillars of his life.
His great performance against Haaland puts Ancelotti in a little trouble, who will recover Militao for the return against City. The Italian will have to sit Rüdiger, Camavinga, Fede Valverde or Rodrygo. “Crazy” Toni will take it well. That’s for sure.
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