Saul Niguez produced a piece of absolute magic against Bayern Munich to score a beautiful solo-effort goal that gave Atletico Madrid a 1-0 lead in the first leg of the Champions League semi final tie.
However, lets take a two minute silence for all the football fans who watched last Tuesday night’s drab semi final first leg between Manchester City and Real Madrid.
A moment of silence…. pic.twitter.com/QjcTp7WiFB
— Troll Football (@TrollFootball) April 27, 2016
Now back to Saul’s brilliant performance against Bayern. It was not just his solo goal that marked the young Spaniard as the best player of the match. Saul put in an overall good shift during the entire game. Here are a couple of stats to show just how well he played.
Saúl Ñíguez: First half vs Bayern, Rating 8.92, Shots(OT) 2(2), Goals 1, Dribbles 5, Tackles 2, Interceptions 2 #UCL pic.twitter.com/2ShFxIkwcm
— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) April 27, 2016
Saul Niguez’s first half by numbers vs. Bayern:
5 take-ons
2 interceptions
2 tackles won
1 goalSit down, Xabi. pic.twitter.com/ghzzNicjQx
— Squawka Football (@Squawka) April 27, 2016
Sit down Xabi indeed.
Along with Busquets & Iniesta, Spain’s midfield for the Euros should be on show here (Koke, Saul & Thiago). Not sure VdB will pick them tho
— Kieran Canning (@KieranCanning) April 27, 2016
True That pic.twitter.com/z1b9UN9BBc
— Troll Football (@TrollFootball) April 27, 2016
However, with Saul’s wonderful solo goal, it was inevitable that Twitter would draw on the famous character Saul Goldman from the popular TV series Breaking Bad. Here are some good puns we found on Twitter, that basically asked Atletico (or Diego Simeone) to “Better call Saul”.
Atletico called on Saul to get past Bayern Munich. pic.twitter.com/zGFfaS7Ihg
— Bleacher Report UK (@br_uk) April 28, 2016
‘Better Call Saul’ and other brilliant Atleti-Bayern memes from Spain and around the web: https://t.co/hNBs34xSzl pic.twitter.com/MEm1rcXnsO
— AS English (@English_AS) April 27, 2016
“Who is he? Atleti revelation scouted by United” WHAT do you do when you need to break down Bayern Munich? Better Call Saul! The Atletico M…
— Football show (@ALivestreaming) April 28, 2016
Surely a few clubs out there thinking they better call Saul’s agent!
— Andrew Orsatti (@AndrewOrsatti) April 27, 2016
According to one fan though, the TV series might have been a bit too popular, as he gives a sarcastic figure of the number of websites that have used “Better call Saul in their headlines. Well, we’re guilty of it too now, but we just could not resist.
183756643746448474648237346 – Number of sports websites that have used ‘Better call Saul’ as their headline this morning #NotOptaStat
— DeeSee (@BeingDeeSee) April 28, 2016