Real Madrid hosted Galatasaray last night at their Santiago Bernabeu stadium in the first leg of the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals. Madrid set themselves up perfectly for the second leg in Turkey next Tuesday after securing a 3-0 win against their opponents.
Galatasaray faced a big task in taking on nine-times European Cup winners Real Madrid and it was the home side who looked very lively from the kick-off. It took just nine minutes for Madrid to take the lead, when Mesut Ozil slipped a perfect ball between two Galatasaray defenders and who else but Cristiano Ronaldo latched onto the end of it and chipped the ball over Fernando Muslera, scoring in his fourth consecutive Champions League match. Just three minutes later, Didier Drogba wasted Galatasaray’s first real chance and a great opportunity to level the scores after some clever work by Burak Yilmaz, but he failed to hit the target with his shot. Real Madrid continued to push forward, playing some great football in order to grab another goal. In the 25th minute, Drogba did hit the target with a swerving shot from long range which Diego Lopez could only parry away for a corner. Four minutes later, Madrid found the second goal that they had been looking for when a great cross from the right by Michael Essien drifted over three Galatasaray players before an unmarked Karim Benzema killed the ball with a lovely first touch and struck it into the net. 2-0 to Real Madrid! Arguably Galatasaray’s best chance of the game came just before half time when Emmanuel Eboue and Drogba performed a fantastic one-two and Eboue forced a good save from Diego Lopez with a rocketing shot.
The second half was very much the same for the home side, who persistently went on the attack, trying to break the opposition down (who had a couple of half-chances themselves). In the 72nd minute, Real were given a controversial free-kick which Xabi Alonso whipped into the box and substitute Gonzalo Higuain got onto the end of it, heading the ball into the goal. After this, Madrid were happy to see out the remainder of the game, resulting in a 3-0 win.
So, the job seems to be already done by the Spanish giants with Galatasaray needing to win by four goals in the reverse fixture. But, like it has always been said, anything can happen in these competitions and teams just cannot be written off. We will have to wait and see what Galatasaray can do at their Turk Telekom Arena next week. Could we a see an unexpected surprise? Tickets for the 2nd leg available here!
