Arbeloa Hails Real Madrid's Resilience in Dramatic Injury-Time Win Over Celta Vigo

Real Madrid head coach Alvaro Arbeloa defended his side's performance and celebrated their character after a hard-fought 2-1 victory over Celta Vigo, thanks to Federico Valverde's injury-time winner. The result keeps Madrid's LaLiga title hopes alive, placing them just one point behind leaders Barcelona despite having played an extra game.

The match started brightly for Arbeloa's men, with Vinicius Junior hitting the post inside the first 10 minutes. Aurelien Tchouameni then opened the scoring, assisted by Arda Guler, who notched his eighth assist of the season. However, Celta Vigo fought back, equalizing through Borja Iglesias and continuing to threaten the Madrid defense—Iago Aspas struck the post in the 87th minute.

Valverde's deflected effort in injury time proved decisive, securing the three points. Despite generating less expected goals (xG of 0.87 compared to Celta's 1.05) and managing only three shots on target, Arbeloa emphasized that the win was all that mattered.

In the post-match press conference, Arbeloa said: "We won the game, which is what Real Madrid play for. Which is what we want and the objective we had today." He added, "There is no better way to celebrate these 124 years of history of the best club in the world, than to do it this way. Like Real Madrid does: fighting against everything and everyone. In a match to which we came with a lot of difficulties and casualties. I think we have to celebrate it for how it has been. We deserved to win, despite everything that happened in the match."

Arbeloa singled out Valverde for praise, calling him the embodiment of a Real Madrid player: "All a Real Madrid player should be is Federico Valverde. He has that 'spirit of Juanito'. Today the team has been put on his back, again. Very happy for him, he deserves it a lot." This was Valverde's second league goal of the campaign.

With the LaLiga race heating up, attention now shifts to the Champions League. Madrid host Manchester City in the first leg at the Santiago Bernabeu on Wednesday. Arbeloa issued a rallying cry to the fans: "We need them on Wednesday and they know it better than anyone. We played against one of the great clubs in the world of football. But we are much stronger when they are by our side."