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Gareth Bale helped Real Madrid defeat Roma on Tuesday to ensure that he will reach the top of his group in the Champions League despite a chaotic start to the season.
Bale scored one, then provided the center that led another when Lucas Vazquez clinched a 2-0 clinical victory at Stadio Olimpico.
Roma missed several opportunities in the first period, the best falling against Cengiz Under, guilty of a shocking miss six meters, the goal being exhausted.
The mistake of Federico Fazio then offered the first match to Bale and Roma fainted thereafter, allowing Madrid to recover from its defeat against Eibar last weekend by finishing in the lead Group G.
Both teams knew that they had already qualified thanks to Viktoria Plzen's victory over CSKA Moscow at the start of the match, making it a winning match that took first place.
Madrid has taken hold of them, once again showing their magic touch in the Champions League, where the team's problems in national competitions seem to have never been solved.
They spent more than eight hours scoreless this season and two weeks without a permanent coach, but Santiago Solari still leads Real in the playoffs as a group winner with a match to play.
Solari may have felt relief after the disastrous demonstration in Eibar on Saturday, as the presidency of Roma coach Eusebio di Francesco sets up. They have only won one of their last five Serie A matches and Antonio Conte was watching the crowd.
There were quite a few winners at the time Solari was at the helm, but Isco was not one of them. After starting the first five games of the new coach, he was not even named to the substitutes' bench in Italy.
Marcos Llorente was parachuted for the position of defensive midfielder, while Marco Asensio, who had not yet caught fire, was replaced by a bench.
The Roma dominated the first half, but Madrid had their first chance. Vazquez grabbed Bale's cross and yielded to Luka Modric, whose deflected shot was well saved by Robin Olsen's foot.
From there, the best chances come to the hosts since Raphael Varane seems to defy physics by turning away from the boots of Patrik Schick and his own bar.
Stephan El Shaarawy slammed the door and his replacement, Justin Kluivert, fired. Schick has not managed to connect closely.
Madrid was hanging on, a Roma attack leaving a handful of white shirts scattered in the penalty area. Thibaut Courtois saved from the foot, Dani Carvajal blocked, before Aleksandar Kolorov unleashed a trademark shot that whistled off.
The worst miss of the half, and maybe of the season, was coming. Carvajal dragged around and sent Nicolo Zaniolo to the goal. At the last post, Madrid had not recovered, nor Courtois, who rushed to the other side of the goal, but Under, without pressure, blazed.
At halftime, he was walking painfully and was consoled as he had missed a penalty, but it seemed inevitable that Roma would pay for the mistake.
They did it twice in 12 minutes. First, Fazio aggravated Olsen's bad clearance with an even worse head back, which landed at Bale's feet and the Welshman made no mistake.
Then Bale was involved in the second goal, a cross-searching attempt from Karim Benzema, whose clever head down gave Vazquez a simple finish.
In the meantime, Bale could have scored two points when he would have released on the break because Roma had lost momentum, form and conviction.
Bale, Benzema and Modric have all been eliminated. They rested for Valencia on Saturday, as a tight first game became comfortable.
© 2018 AFP
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