Xabi Alonso: “Maybe it's good that this happens to us so we can be alert next time.”

Real Madrid played a dreamy first half-hour, controlled the rest of the game, and suddenly lost control just as the match was drawing to a close. Xabi Alonso summed it up afterward with some annoyance: “We had periods with the ball, periods without it, controlling it well. Until the 80th minute, we were unable to stop things from happening. A lot happened after the 3-1 in two minutes.”

There was a penalty from Huijsen, which Courtois called "unnecessary," and which also cost the center-back a red card, who will miss Wednesday's semifinal against Paris Saint-Germain. And there was also a last-gasp shot from Sabitzer, which the Belgian saved almost on the line. "I didn't want to play extra time," said the goalkeeper, whose action was the last thing that happened before the referee blew his whistle.

Courtois suffered from that sudden loss of control, just as the team was already in sight of the brink: “At 2-0, with five or six minutes left, maybe we were already too relaxed. With the heat and the game already looking like it was over. And then a bad clearance [from Rüdgier], a good goal from them [from Beier], and suddenly the game goes crazy. We score 3-1, and you think it's over, and nothing, they start and suddenly a penalty. A slightly unnecessary red card too. Suddenly they add one or two minutes and the game goes crazy. And that's football, and even more so in a World Cup, where everything is decided in seconds.”

The day before, in the afternoon, Xabi Alonso explained something that seemed like a premonition, although in reality it's nothing more than a diagnosis of the point at which a process under construction is found: "We're having good phases. We have to keep working to have more continuity and be more consistent in those good phases so that we don't become disconnected."

The slip a few hours later in the same stadium where he had spoken those words only serves to remind us of the incipient nature of his project to change a team that had just come off four years with another coach. Despite everything, the scare wasn't final: "Fortunately, we can celebrate being in the semi-finals. And, well, maybe it's good that this happens to us so we can be on our toes next time."

The next test is against PSG next Wednesday, also at the MetLife (9:00 p.m., Dazn and Telecinco). A more difficult point, they are the European champions, but Luis Enrique's team also made two mistakes in the final minutes of their semi-final against Bayern Munich : the referee sent off Pacho and Lucas Hernández.