The first half was a battle in the cold. Wagner's Huddersfield pressed with the same intensity that had earned them promotion high, aggressive, the two gegenpress systems colliding in midfield, the ball ricocheting between bodies.
The frozen pitch made first touches treacherous. Rodríguez, whose feet usually had the delicacy of a surgeon's hands, mistimed two passes in the opening ten minutes as the ball skidded off the crystalline surface.
Sarah leaned towards me at the fifteen-minute mark. "Their left centre-back is stepping too high when Neves has the ball. The space behind him is there that Navas could exploit it... if we switch the play quicker."
