crinkly_ears | Valencia Match Spam: Mesut Assists & Gets A Card To Match His Shoes But Not His Shirt! (Reply)

Valencia Match Spam: Mesut Gets A Card To Match His Shoes, Assists the 2:0 & Is NOT Sent Off!

Mesut in Valencia!

Plus: Samisut For Your Monday!

Pre-Match Notes

Mesut spent the days and hours before the match being written up by Marca -

One of Madrid's "Fabulous 4!"

Keeping his bromantic options open and bestowing, in that careless way he has, some of his greatly coveted affection on Gonzalo Higuain (who should realize by now that he's not the only one!) -

And checking

o_ozil for updates!

They're calling us Samisut?!?!

The Match Spam!

Valencia is the team that shared points with Barca in their meeting earlier this season in the league (in a ripper of a game that saw a couple players being sent off). Their stadium, the Mestalla, is where Madrid won the Copa del Rey last year.

Madrid wore Bayern Munich red, for the first time in 109 years of playing in the Liga. Mesut accessorized his white-striped jersey with a pure-white matching headband!

And spent the pre-game standing around looking bug-eyed and gorgeous, as always.

This gif is strangely hypnotic.

From the very start it was obviously going to be a difficult game. The first 5 minutes had a shaky looking Madrid and a frightfully sharp looking Valencia (pressing, passing, moving at great speed).

Although you wouldn't know it from the relentless criticism he was getting from the English commentators, anyone with eyes could see that Sami Khedira was in fact Madrid's best player for the beginning of the game, constantly up front and even having a goal-disallowed. Quite apart from that he looked utterly gorgeous in red, of course!

This post's gratuitous helping of luscious, scruffy Tunisian.

Meanwhile, Mesut was doing his usual thing chalking up his "scoring chances created" count - for which he topped the charts in Spain (and Europe for that matter) by an absurd amount last year. Like so:

The English commentators were delighted with his movement. The gif above was quite typical of the first half. Madrid made nearly all their moves up the right side. Although Kaka is still injured Mesut was not moved back to his normal position since Madrid played 4-3-3. He was once again playing on the right side. And looking effortlessly cute too -

Then Baklava-Benzi scored a sweet goal off a quickly taken Xabi Alonso free kick (which Mesut earned by being fouled) -

Lasers??? Die Valencia fans! Die!

Mesut shared a brief cuddle with Crispy and was saved for last in Benzi's very cheerful celebration.

So far so good. Madrid retired at the half and could be relatively pleased with their performance thus far.

Alas, hilarity (if you can call it that) ensued in the second half. It started with Marcelo being carded (quite justifiably) for a silly foul and Mesut stepping up to block the view of the goal (his assigned chore during all free kicks because of his inability to be part of a defensive wall without flinching or moving out of the way) -

Unfortunately, Mesut and the linesman couldn't agree on how far ten yards out from the ball actually was, which meant Mesut was carded by the referee. This likely wouldn't have happened without a warning had he not just carded three players in the melee featured above, but tempers were rising.

A yellow card to match his yellow boots!

This was fairly significant for Mesut's game. Although the English commentators rather condescendingly remarked that the points "mean far more to Madrid, probably" this is not actually the case, and a seriously insulting comment to any Valencia players or fans (or any serious Madrid fans for that matter) - who all knew full well that a win against Madrid would leave them one point off the lead on the table behind Barca and Madrid (who would have been tied at the top).

A very understandable reaction took place among the Valencia players, who were, strictly speaking, out-playing Madrid but had not had a sniff of the goal yet. With 3 Madrid players on yellow cards within a minute of each other (Marcelo for his foul, Ramos for dissent, and Mesut for blocking a free kick), the Valencia game-plan became apparent: long balls over the top and getting a Madrid player sent off. So the following rather interesting overreaction to Mesut's perfectly justifiable shoulder-to-shoulder challenge becomes rather more explicable from a team that would never have been wasting time a goal down otherwise -

Note: hilarious overreaction to legal challenge.

Here is the same foul again:

And here is another about 3 minutes later - with the same player involved -

Note: diver on the ground.

Mesut was very calm about all of it -

"Stop your bloody moaning!"

Mourinho, who had not argued with a refereeing decision since the Super-copa, was moved to protest for the first time this season by Mesut's patent innocence - and the very patent and sinister intention to have him sent off -

Mourinho: staunch defender of small play-makers.

Mourinho, according to some sources, yelled at Alba to "get up" only to be gently pushed aside by Mesut (whose own initial reaction to seeing Jordi Alba on the ground is actually rather amusing) -

Of course it is easy to find this attempt to send off a rather mild-mannered player (Mesut, that is) funny two days later. But at the time it wasn't funny at all and made for very stressful viewing for a Madrid fan in general and a Mesut Ozil fan in particular. Remember: this is a Mesut Ozil-centric community. For those of you who missed the game, let me assure you that this behaviour was occurring all over the pitch anytime a Madrid player with a yellow card (there were 7 by the end of the game - most resulting after the official was swarmed by outraged players following every tiny foul) came anywhere near a Valencia player. The referee had completely lost control of the game - though not to the extent that he was prepared to send off innocent players.

The arguing went on for nearly two minutes, the foul taking place at around 15:40 and the arguing finally coming to an end at nearly 17:30 (in the second half) -

But Mesut wasn't fussed! He stepped up to take his corner kick a few minutes later -

Sergio Ramos scoring the 2:0.

And it was perfect. I have noted before that Madrid players score off set-pieces rather less frequently than Mesut's German teammates. It's obvious from this moment though that it isn't for lack of practice.

Ramos's placement for the kick and Mesut's delivery was perfect and probably the result of practice. And after a stressful second half thus far, with much arguing between players and officials, and coaches and officials, and players and players, Ramos celebrated with the bench (and Mourinho) -

I feel whatever it is Marcelo is shouting!

That was the first of 4 goals scored in 20 minutes. Alas, 2 of them were for Valencia. Happily, Crispy scored Madrid's third. But that was stressful! Let's just admire Mesut's delivery one more time from every conceivable angle instead of talking about all that!

And happily,

andriy_7's love of Jose Mourinho (defender of small, innocent play-makers) means he sent the following - Mourinho's much criticized goal-celebration for Crispy Ronaldo's third goal -

This is Mourinho. He is pleased! Note: Callejon's matching fist-pump!

Meanwhile, back on the pitch, Mesut (who has never been one to leap into things) decided that on reflection he'd not be joining Madrid's man-pile following Crispy's goal, and would be patting heads and bestowing affectionate carresses instead!

Hmmm...not bad actually!

The evening came to a merciful end after a bogus penalty shout-out for Valencia (it hit Higuain's chest! So STFU about it!) and we had the evening's one, solitary Samisut moment!

Could this mean...trouble in paradise? Well, check out today's training pictures and make up your own minds about that!

♥

So - all things considered, an excellent match! As Aitor Karanka said after the game: "we can win beautifully, and we can win through suffering too." Very well said, especially when on considers that on paper this should be Madrid's second toughest game of this half of the season.