Real Madrid put the football on and dance to Atletico's tune in the derby

The first derby of the season was a rarefied affair. The spectre of 90s football racism hung over the match thanks to a snowball that self-styled sports journalism claims to have neither shaped nor thrown downhill. 

Brazil screaming for Vinicius to score. From Pelé to Arsenal's Twitter account hours before Atlético de Madrid-Real Madrid at the Metropolitano. That stadium and that club have been held hostage for years by a radical section of the fans who no longer even love their own players. Cerezo lives in his cowboy movies and Gil Marín only thinks about selling up and leaving. 

Fortunately, Simeone and Ancelotti brought sanity to a game where Atlético had much more at stake than Real Madrid, even though Los Blancos were not the leaders at the start. But Ancelotti's men play differently, with a different rhythm, as if football is not their game. You don't know if they win or lose. They just play, they play again and again. They fly over the pitch. And when it's all over, they laugh, make jokes and remember the plays. 

Simeone brought Griezmann into the starting eleven and broke all the rules. He put the club on the ropes and reminded the board that football does not understand clauses. If the 90 minutes the Frenchman played force him to be a substitute in two games, so be it. But he warned that the team plays better with him and Real Madrid was not the rival to sit him for 60 minutes.

In any case, Atlético de Madrid is not just Griezmann. It's a dull team that plays what Simeone doesn't want because the Argentine has too many open battles. The other is the fans, who ask him to have a good time on the banks of the M-40.

The Red and Whites' chances caused no problems for a defence that earned the praise of Simeone himself at the end of the game. Neither Alaba, nor Militao, nor Mendy, nor Rudiger, nor Carvajal. All as one man defended a Joao Felix who looked as if he had just come out of Benfica's youth academy. 

When Atlético got tired of coming and getting nothing, it was Real Madrid's turn. A Valverde ride and a masterful pass from Tchouaméni over the defence for Rodrygo to convert the first under the watchful eye of Oblak, who was back in the team. 

Eighteen minutes went by and Vinicius' finish ended up on the post to the glory of Valverde who was there after a rise that only he believed in to score the second goal. By the way, the definition was with extraordinary force, half a metre from the goal line and with little angle. As Ancelotti says "he has a stone for a foot". 

Madrid danced Atlético. They did it by playing football and allowed themselves to do so with Rodrygo's goal. There went Vinicius to prove that the problem for the red-and-white fans is not the rival's celebrations, it is their frustrations towards the team and towards Simeone with a marriage that is already broken. 

In the second half Real Madrid put the game to bed. They kept Atletico Madrid at bay, who didn't have many ideas to get forward either. The goal was scored from a corner in which Courtois misjudged the ball and the ball hit Hermoso's shoulder and ended up in the back of the net. 

The fans pushed the team on, but the striker himself lost his head when he was confronted by Carvajal for a foul on Reinildo, who was only looking for that, the lack of control of one of the red and white players. Not content, Hermoso clashed with Ceballos at a corner and the Andalusian added theatricality to the blow with a shocking fall. Munuera Montero conceded and Hermoso was sent off two and a half minutes after giving his team a chance to level the match. The 'pupas' thing, again. 

Real Madrid came out on top at the Metropolitano and are still unstoppable, winning everything they play at the start of the season. They left Atlético eight points behind and mired in an existential crisis that does not look like ending well. This Atlético is more like the one that Manzano left before Cholo arrived than the one that has won leagues and played in Champions League finals. 

Now the Spanish national team is warning of the first break. Two friendlies before the World Cup can destabilise anyone and Ancelotti knows that.