Real Madrid vs Valencia
The league is about to begin, but first Real Madrid have to defeat Valencia at the Santiago Bernabéu to win their eighth Spanish Super Cup title. At 22:00 CET tonight, the Whites will look to come back from the first leg’s 3-2 defeat.
Real Madrid are set to play their first official home match of the 2008/09 campaign. Several new faces arrived on the team this summer. Former youth system players Rubén de la Red and Javi García returned to the Club. The former had a brilliant season last year at Getafe and won the Euro 2008 with Spain in June, while the latter gained experience in the First Division at Osasuna. Rafael van der Vaart is the Club’s latest signing. The Dutch player came from Hamburg and delighted fans with excellent performances in friendlies against Independiente Santa Fe and Eintracht Frankfurt.
POSITIVE PRECEDENTS
Real Madrid are used to coming back from early defeats in this competition, as proven by their 4-1 victory after a 2-1 defeat at Camp Nou in 1997 and their 3-0 home victory after losing to Mallorca in the first leg 2-1 in 2003.
PEPE, DRENTHE & MARCELO ON THE SQUAD LIST
Bernd Schuster has included 18 men on his squad list for the return leg of the Spanish Super Cup. Casillas, Sergio Ramos, Pepe, Diarra, Raúl, Robinho, Robben, Guti, Heinze, Van Nistelrooy, De la Red, Van der Vaart, Higuaín, Torres, Javi García, Marcelo, Drenthe and Dudek have made the cut. Sneijder, Saviola, Salgado, Metzelder and Cannavaro will miss the match due to injury, while Codina has been left our for coaching decisions.
Pepe returns after being suspended for the previous encounter, while Drenthe and Marcelo recently returned from their foray in the Olympic Games -the Brazilian won the Brionze Medal with his national team-.
The objective tonight is to at least score one goal and concede none. That’s all the team needs to win the title. (official Real Madrid site)
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