Madrid and PSG qualify for the semifinals of the Club World Cup on a day marked by Musiala's terrible injury

Real Madrid and PSG will meet in the Club World Cup semifinals after eliminating German rivals Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich respectively, on a day marked not only by spectacular goals and refereeing controversies, but mainly by the very serious injury suffered by young German star Jamal Musiala, in a scene that has gone around the world due to the drama experienced on the field of play, with the players of both teams expressing horror at the cries of pain from the Munich playmaker.

Such a moment would occur in the first match of the day, with both teams displaying a purposeful game in which PSG exhibited their soccer of maximum pressure and fast transitions, while Bayern deployed a soccer as offensive as associative, generating numerous chances in the area of a Luis Enrique's team that ended with defenders Willian Pacho and Lucas Hernandez sent off, with Anthony Taylor clearly not having a good day at the office.

While both teams showed great soccer in the first half, the match would be entirely overshadowed in the injury time minutes, when in a split ball goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma threw himself on the ball, with all his humanity falling on Musiala's left ankle, fracturing it in a way that was as wild as it was chilling. The play, moreover, represented a clear penalty that little will be said about due to the seriousness of what happened to the young German, who will miss between 4 and 6 months.

In the second half, the chances of goal were shared between goal and goal until the Parisian promise Desiré Doué nailed a low left-footed shot into the back of the net in the 78th minute, against a Manuel Neuer who could do little. The minutes after the goal had all the ingredients: Bayern attacking and PSG counterattacking, the dismissals of Pacho and Hernandez, and the sentence in the 98th minute by an Ousmane Dembele who was making his debut in the competitionand showed why he has been the top star of Luis Enrique's team.

Alonso's idea has already caught on

The second and final match of the day was the replay of the final of the Champions League 2024, with a Madrid in full transition and a Dortmund that for the umpteenth time seeks to find its place in the world before the harsh reality of seeing their coach or a good part of their stars leave for bigger teams almost every year. In this context, and with a white team playing only its fifth game under Xabi Alonso, a match began that would see the scoreboard open in the 10th minute, after a great cross from Arda Guler, who had been converted into an organizing midfielder, was taken by the surprise player of the tournament: Gonzalo García, a talented striker from La Fábrica who with this goal becomes the top scorer of the Club World Cup with four goals, proving that the homegrown talent in Spain is not only manifested in Catalonia.

Just ten minutes after this goal, Madrid would score the second by Fran García, who would eventually be voted player of the match not only for the goal but also for the fact that he performed in every aspect of the game. His goal represented in the most explicit way the way in which Alonso's system of play begins to work faster than expected, as it is the typical goal of any team that plays with a three-man line: quick transitions, overflow of one of the wingers who crosses into the box -Trent Alexander Arnold in this case-, and the finish of the other wingers who plays inside.

The second half was a Madrid monologue that would lead to a period of madness in stoppage time, after Dortmund scored a stoppage time goal thanks to Maximilian Beier.only to see the white team score the third with Kylian Mbappe finishing off another exquisite cross from Arda Guler, who promises to be one of the players to watch this season. Two minutes later, center back Dean Huijsen committed a clear penalty that referee Ramon Abatti not only sanctioned, but also punished with a red card.

Serhou Guirassy scored his third goal of the tournament and gave Dortmund hope. And while many believed that nothing more would happen in the 98th minute and just seconds before the end of the match, the truth is that the German team had the equalizer at the feet of Marcel Sabitzer, in a shot that in any other match and against any other opponent would have ended up in the net if it had not been for Thibaut Courtois, who once again saved Madrid, in the same way that the superhero saves the damsel in distress in those comics and fictions that are increasingly less common and paradoxically more timeless.