Real Madrid-Bayern Munich: A closer look at what happened to cause that horrific blooper by goalkeeper Ulreich
Ulreich will, unfortunately for him, always be remembered for doing this
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1 min read
A goalkeeper isn't supposed to handle the ball with his hands when it is coming off a pass from a teammate. It's pretty much soccer 101. My little neighbor down the road is like 11 years old, and he doesn't play soccer, but he probably knows the rule.
Bayern Munich goalkeeper Sven Ulreich doesn't appear to know how it works.
The German shot-stopper produced an all-time Champions League blooper on Tuesday in the semifinals against Real Madrid. Level in the second leg 1-1 but trailing 3-2 on aggregate, he let Real score in an unbelievable way. He received a pass from Corentin Tolisso, his teammate, and he had two options.
1) Kick the ball away
2) Touch it with his hands and concede an indirect kick
One would have been the best, and two would have sucked. But somehow, he made an even worse decision. He went to touch the ball with his hands, but then seemed to change he mind and want to kick it. And he wasn't able to do either, and Real got an easy goal. Check this out:
Unbelievable! One HUGE howler from Sven Ulreich undoes all of Bayern's great work in the first half. pic.twitter.com/C8idIsheer
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) May 1, 2018
That couldn't have gone any worse. A gaffe like no other in recent memory. And you know his teammates will tell him it is OK after the match.
But it doesn't fix anything. Not having injured starting goalkeeper Manuel Neuer hurts, but this will hurt more for any Bayern fan for a long, long time.
And you have to wonder if Neuer were to play, would this have happened? All but certainly not. He's one of the best goalkeepers in the world and as sharp as they come. But, Bayern didn't have the option to play him. Less than two weeks ago he returned to training for the first time in seven months from a foot fracture, and he's nearly healthy for the end of the season and this summer's World Cup for Germany.
But we can examine "ifs" all we want. In the end, it's a gaffe that will not be forgotten anytime soon. It's hard to tell how the match would have turned out had that not occurred. It hurt, it did massive damage to Bayern and it is the deciding factor in the game on one of the biggest of stages.
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