Rodrygo and Vinícius double up as Real Madrid hit five past hapless Salzburg
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“We will play and then we will see,” Carlo Ancelotti had said, so Real Madrid did their part and by the end of an ultimately easy night, life looked good again. The European champions started this match as the 22nd best team in the continent, somewhere towards the bottom of a table that keeps everyone guessing and supposedly on the edge of a catastrophe, and finished it eight places higher and feeling like favourites again.
![[Vinícius Junior fires home Real Madrid’s fourth goal against Salzburg.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bc08f75145a68fb5c87653c2574af5027aab204a/0_0_3561_2136/master/3561.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Madrid had been defeated by Lille, Milan and Liverpool, but there was time still and a revival to come and now a 5-1 victory over Red Bull Salzburg in their penultimate game lifts them back among the seeds for the playoff round. With one game to go, against Brest next week, it also leaves them a single point from not having to play it at all. Two goals each from Rodrygo and Vinícius and another for Kylian Mbappé means they still have a small chance of completing the first phase of this new format in the top eight.
In the end, in fact, Madrid may even be disappointed that they had not drawn even closer here: four up inside an hour, withdrawing Jude Bellingham with 30 minutes left and replacing Kylian Mbappé and Rodrygo 10 minutes after that, Madrid only scored one more and then conceded late; had they kept up that rate, they could have climbed still further, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund two and three goals away respectively. Ancelotti though was satisfied and rightly so: for all the pressure, all the pessimism, this was a night that put things back where they are supposed to be.
