Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo combined brilliantly for Real Madrid's second goal at the Bernabéu. Photograph: Javier Soriano/AFP/Getty Images
For 20 minutes Ajax attacked Real Madrid and then they did something risky: they attacked them again. It proved to be once too often. Goals from Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaká and Karim Benzema gave Madrid a 3-0 victory that means progress from Group D already looks a formality but it was the ability to launch swift counter-attacks, led by Xabi Alonso's diagonal deliveries crisscrossing the pitch, that was most striking. Ajax certainly had been struck with three devastating blows.
José Mourinho was nowhere to be seen as he served the final game of his Uefa ban. Wherever he was watching, he would have been delighted with the way the game ended. Ultimately, Madrid were comfortable; even the missed chances – and they came for Kaká who had one clear opportunity and appealed for a penalty before being replaced to a standing ovation on 75 minutes – mattered little. At the other end, Christian Eriksen's shot into the side-netting would not have unduly concerned Mourinho or the coach-for-the-night Aitor Karanka.
The start had been a different matter. Ajax are a young, inexperienced side. The full-back Gregory van der Wiel has played more Champions League games than anyone else and this was only his seventh appearance in the competition. Small wonder, then, that their manager, Frank De Boer, had insisted that the key would be whether his players had the nerve to attack Madrid at the Bernabéu.
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