Real Madrid face Celtic tomorrow fresh from a 5-1 hammering of AC Milan in front of 49,474 fans creating a record attendance for a ‘soccer match’ in the Yankee Stadium.
Cristiano Ronaldo with a double and further goals from Angel di Maria, Sergio Ramos and Jose Callejon saw off Milan who have been strongly linked with a move for Kaka.
Yesterday as Celtic flew into Philadelphia the Real players attended a friendly between Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers at the Lincoln Financial Field where they’ll meet Celtic and took part in an American football exhibition to entertain the locals.
Jose Mourinho’s side have won all three matches so far in their stateside trip and were comfortable winners of La Liga ahead of Barcelona but were knocked out of the Champions League by Bayern Munich in the semi-finals.
Mourinho’s cocky approach to the game never changes with the former Chelsea and Porto boss looking forward eagerly to the season ahead.
“The group is strong, united and motivated,” he said after defeating Madrid. “If we continue like we are in good condition to start the championship.
“We want to win every game although the matches in the Champions League are on a different level to domestic games.
“We are trying to coordinate the training and games to compliment each other. Every game is important and even friendlies in the U.S. are important to meeting our fans, for our preparation and to promote soccer.”
He added: “The league is very, very strong. A beautiful league, because the teams are very technical, and that’s the reason I’m in Spain, because I want to be where the best league is.
“Our squad is strong. It’s good. It’s young. And we feel no needs.”
The new riches of Manchester City and PSG present a new challenge to Madrid but Mourinho believes that UEFA’s Fair Play regulations will benefit the older established clubs.
“UEFA is working on what they call the financial fair play, which will be good for a club like Real Madrid,” he explained. “Real Madrid is economically very powerful but doesn’t depend on money not produced by the club.
The club by itself produces that money, so Real Madrid will be in a much better position when the financial fair play comes.”
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Just wait until we get a hold of them, anyone can put 5 past that diddy team 😉
Should we be worried?
we’re going to get a lesson on saturday,ajax was just the warm up i think. As long as we learn from teams like madrid and ajax we won’t go wrong because you won’t learn much beating teams like east fife peterhead or cambuslang rangers lol hail hail
We shouldn’t be worried about facing Real, we should enjoy the occasion. The team will learn much from the encounter and will benefit from the experience. The result will be irrelevant and it beats playing in the Ramsdens Cup.
We have 2 options I think, sit in and take a doing like so many teams do on a weekly basis v Madrid surrendering possession and spoil (Similar to what we see minnows do at Parkhead) or we set out our stall to stifle the midfield and try to take the game to them. Press them high up the park and take our chances – might still get gubbed but better to go down fighting.