Hat-trick hero played as an auxiliary right-back before excelling everywhere in midfield in one of the great European displays
Fede Valverde made his way down the tunnel at the Santiago Bernabéu wearing the captain’s armband and the No 8 shirt Toni Kroos had wanted him to have. He carried the pennant commemorating what was going to be the match of his life, touched palms with the kids in the sponsored shirts that lined the route on right and left, and then stepped out into the light.
When he headed back inside again 45 minutes later, the first off the pitch at half-time, he paused briefly and clenched his fist, which was a pretty low‑key reaction considering what he had just done.
What he had just done was barely believable, genuinely one of the most absurd performances this place has seen and, boy, has it seen some absurd performances. On the tunnel wall is a slogan from Alfredo Di Stéfano: it says that no player is as good as all the players put together. That is true of course, but it had been tested here, and not just because Valverde sometimes seems to be all the players put together, a man with four lungs and three first-half goals, all of them brilliant.
Here Valverde had been the auxiliary right-back that protected them during 20 minutes when Madrid, and Trent Alexander‑Arnold, had appeared overrun. Then he was the 7, the 8, the 9 and the 10 who scored the outrageous a 22-minute hat-trick that left Manchester City sunk by a familiar feeling. And at the very end he was back at right-back again, somehow relieving the tension with one last tackle that was as much a portrait of him as the goals had been, securing a clean sheet to go with the three goals, victory theirs. Victory his, above all.
