At 9:00 p.m. at the Civitas Metropolitano in Madrid, the city derby between Atletico and Real. A derby that was very disappointing in the first half. Although both teams had two shots on target, neither of them created a good opportunity to score a goal.
In the 64th minute, the deadlock was broken by Eder Militao, who defeated Jan Oblak after a pass from Vinicius Jr. Real's goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois, reacted emotionally to the Brazilian's goal and turned towards the most ardent sector fans Atletico and celebrated the goal.
This enraged the most passionate fans. In the 67th minute, after Atletico's offensive action, Courtois picked up a lighter from the pitch and handed it to the referee. He passed it on to the technical referee, who recorded the incident in the match report.
Madrid derby interrupted!
But this was only the beginning of scandalous scenes. More objects were thrown onto the Civitas Metropolitano pitch, which caused the referee to stop the match! The referee first informed the coaches of both teams about this and then asked the players to go to the locker room.
However, not all players did this. Atletico icons – Jose Maria Gimenez and Koke – approached the most ardent fans and started asking them to calm down. Diego Simeone did the same, using eloquent gestures to tell the fans to start thinking and let the players finish the match.
In subsequent replays, we saw not only lighters flying onto the pitch. At one point, Courtois picked up a plastic bag containing feces. – This is an exaggeration – said Tomasz Ćwiąkała, commenting on the meeting on Canal+ Sport.
– These are events that will go down in the inglorious history of La Liga. This is a black page in this story league – added Ćwiąkała. The match was resumed after a break of almost 20 minutes. The match ultimately ended in a 1-1 draw. Angel Correa scored the equalizer in the 95th minute. Three minutes later, Marcos Llorente was shown a red card for a foul on Fran Garcia.
Courtois is a former Atletico goalkeeper. The Belgian played for this club between 2011 and 2014, when he was on loan from Chelsea. With Atletico he won the championship and the national cup, and in the 2013/14 season he even played in final Champions League against Real, where he joined in the summer of 2018.