In my history Zidane's Real Madrid is the worst footballing side I've seen

You don't want to defend with more than 8 unless you play a high line...  you want your top 2 scoring threats to save their energy for attacking because they need to make runs, etc.

You can only defend with your strikers if you intend on recovering the ball very quickly so that it doesn't burn them out.  We don't play that style.

The other option is to sign a striker like Cavani who never gets tired... but he's about the only one who has that in him.

sportsczy wrote:Madrid lack speed and width farfan. Other than Bale, we have nobody that stretches the pitch. We need someone that brings that danger...

Against Bayern there were situations when all 3 were in the box waiting for a cross, it's ridiculous.

Just like non-caribbean Doc stated, the team needs proper hard working wingers.

To me it's not that's we need wingers who are hard working but wingers who have more qualities on the ball to win their 1v1 vs the opposing fullbacks. When Bale was playing good earlier this season he was coming deep to pick up the ball and would bring it forward. But he is playing shit now.

We need more of that type of wide out, before the other clown come to tell us that dribbling is overrated. A player that gets in between the lines and invite the ball in. Whenever CR or Benzema move like that we become 3x more dangerous

wide out or inside... doesn't make a difference as long as he bring that speed and dribbling threat.  The thing Mbappe has that the others don't...  he's a 9 with winger speed and skills to go along with the 9 package.  He just has so many ways he can get you. High football IQ to go with it.

If we don't get this kid, first time I will genuinely be angry in a while.  Last times were Pogba and Hazard.

I also think we need a winger but I don't think the right wing is a problem (yet anyways). The left wing is a yuuuuge problem. There were times against Bayern were Marcelo had the ball and was gesturing for someone to come down so that he could pass the ball to them. He was awfully isolated out there which is such a shame because he is so good on the ball and can work with anyone. I don't think Bale is providing good support to Carvajal on the wing, too many times he goes missing and Carvajal is left all on his own.

I definitely think 4141 is the way forward for us


We have seen it in practice this season, most memorably against Atleti earlier in the season. Time to utilise the best midfield we've had in ages and put the attack out of its misery

Life of the goat g.....

Besides the madness that took place with the refereeing, thought Zidane got his team spot on and made the proper subs. He can't help the linesman's inability to make the correct calls.

Refereeing aside, Zidane reveals we're championship material. Never a doubt in my mind. Though some of you lot lost the faith even when we were winning. And over what, playing style?

Eat your hearts out, haters. This thread be damned to be nothing more than alternative facts.

Yup let's convieniently forget this is our 7th CL semis In a row, having won twice, this team clearly doesn't know what playing big games mean :row: our big game experience is massive + Zidane man management and this has been the recipe for success for far, and it's working pretty damn well

Oh gosh Nick, let the man get some credit nah.

Well he deserves credit, he is coaching a team having a fairly high amount of success here, let's just not get unreasonable with the praise. All that i see is consistent with what i have been saying all along.

I just wont accept the hyperbole in the other direction, there is something to be said about his tactical plan coming into the game that was not working, fielding Isco narrow when Bayern was stretching the pitch both side. The early removal of Benzema as a consequence to this and Asensio fielded wide to support marcelo.

We can make the same observations in victory as in defeats, doesnt take away the credit zidane deserves but helps to keep perspective on things. He basically made the reserve mistake as he did vs Atletico and cost us two points (yes in big games Zidane can cost us points too): going wide to defend atletico when they went narrow and sub someone in the hole.

If i look back to back vs Carlo and Simeone, it doesnt look as if he won the tactical battle in each game, just my two cents.

hate away

No one is saying he is a tactical genius. I think his strong points are man management (that much should be obvious), and team selection (for the most part).

For a club like RM, we don't really need much more. I don't think we should be penalizing him for having great players. It's not always easy to manage great players anyways, if it were, we would never have had to fire any of our past managers.

ZZ is making it work, that is all I can ask for the time being.

ZZ: How do you like me now biatches???

Zidane

Zidane proving me wrong

Zizou

guest7 wrote:Zidane proving me wrong

Zizou

Respect here.

Yeah, I'm not gonna pretend he didn't fk up in the Clasico but once again, he did himself and his team well with his starting line up and subs.

Just to add, Pep finished the season trophy-less while Zidane has 2 to his name this season (:

Doc wrote:Yeah, I'm not gonna pretend he didn't fk up in the Clasico but once again, he did himself and his team well with his starting line up and subs.

Just to add, Pep finished the season trophy-less while Zidane has 2 to his name this season (:

To be fair, though, Pep had a golden generation of footballers on his hands, and he made them play some of the most fantastic football in the history of the game - with countless, truly dominating wins against heavy-weights and light-weights, alike. We may be well on course to winning the league and to be the first team to win back-to-back CL trophies, but we've played some god awful football at times this season. I honestly don't know how we've managed to get this far, but if there's anything Zidane deserves praise for, it's making sure that our top players aren't fatigued before the most decisive matches of the season. The last time we played against Juventus, our players all looked like they were running on fumes.

you obviously aren't a fan of the great Milan, Juve... or any other great Serie A team of the past 35 years. This is how they play. It's not about being beautiful first... it's about results first. If you can play beautifully while getting a result, that's just icing on the cake. But the result is what matters.

Zidane comes from that school of thought. We don't have prime Xavi, Iniesta, Yaya Toure and Busquets to give us that overwhelming technical superiority in the midfield that would allow us to dictate a game like that. Modric, Kroos and Casemiro are very good... but obviously nowhere near that caliber.

Pep cannot win without a dominant midfield like it's being shown. But I am quite certain that Zidane can find a way to win with any squad as long as there's a certain level of quality.

sportsczy wrote:you obviously aren't a fan of the great Milan, Juve... or any other great Serie A team of the past 35 years.  This is how they play.  It's not about being beautiful first... it's about results first.  If you can play beautifully while getting a result, that's just icing on the cake.  But the result is what matters.

Zidane comes from that school of thought.  We don't have prime Xavi, Iniesta, Yaya Toure and Busquets to give us that overwhelming technical superiority in the midfield that would allow us to dictate a game like that.  Modric, Kroos and Casemiro are very good... but obviously nowhere near that caliber.

Pep cannot win without a dominant midfield like it's being shown.  But I am quite certain that Zidane can find a way to win with any squad as long as there's a certain level of quality.  

I may not be a supporter, but I've always liked Juve, and I'm well aware of the tactical cynicism that Italian football is known for. However, I think there's a relevant distinction between playing cynically and making desperate, last-ditch comebacks against opposition that is so poor that they can't even capitalise on multiple, gifted opportunities to win. Some would argue that Zidane doesn't deserve any criticism due to our favourable position, at the moment, but I believe there's a good reason why people keep saying he's lucky.

I don't doubt that Zidane is more capable than Pep of improving any given team's chances of winning, but if he hadn't been so blessed with god-given consistency (result-wise), I think few people would argue that he was capable of making the most out of a top team's talents. With that being said, we have every reason to be happy with how the season has progressed.

The win over Bayern was massive, and we seem to have a firm advantage over Atletico. I still believe our previous match against them was the best performance of the season, and Zidane deserves praise for figuring out how to deal with them. Compared to Ancelotti's last season, Zidane's Madrid has been far better at churning out the results, and the team seems to be hitting form at the right moment as well - which is the opposite of Ancelotti's team, which was unstoppable early in the season, before Modric got injured and everyone else went into zombie mode. It's a good time to be a Real Madrid supporter, but I'm not as convinced as you that the team's results this season, reflect Zidane's ability as a coach. I also don't believe all of those late comeback wins against the Betis' of the league were part of his game plan. I think we all wish that was the case, though.

They're not last ditch comebacks though. ZZ wants his team to take a lead, then sit back and draw the opponent to them... just to hit them with the counter attack to kill them off. That's typical Serie A tactics.

The issue we've had several times is that our defenders aren't good enough to be able to draw in the pressure and handle it. We've conceded goals doing it. Also, if our strikers were anywhere the levels of efficiency they were at last season, we would have killed almost all our games off. But the efficiency has been horrid.

So the tactic goes from killing off a game to actually getting control of it again on several occasions.

The problem isn't the tactic... I love the tactics that we play. The issue is inconsistency of execution. BBC has been mostly awful and the subs aren't very good scorers.

It's interesting that we are fantastic in stressful situations yet lack the killer instinct we had last season... if that makes sense at all lol.

sportsczy wrote:They're not last ditch comebacks though. ZZ wants his team to take a lead, then sit back and draw the opponent to them... just to hit them with the counter attack to kill them off. That's typical Serie A tactics.

The issue we've had several times is that our defenders aren't good enough to be able to draw in the pressure and handle it. We've conceded goals doing it. Also, if our strikers were anywhere the levels of efficiency they were at last season, we would have killed almost all our games off. But the efficiency has been horrid.

So the tactic goes from killing off a game to actually getting control of it again on several occasions.

The problem isn't the tactic... I love the tactics that we play. The issue is inconsistency of execution. BBC has been mostly awful and the subs aren't very good scorers.

It's interesting that we are fantastic in stressful situations yet lack the killer instinct we had last season... if that makes sense at all lol.

So we don't have the players necessary for the tactic, yet we should praise that the tactic is used?

Due to injuries...  before the injuries, we had no problem.  You can't change your style that drastically in mid season when players are out 3-4 weeks.  Problem is that we keep losing guys.

When we were on the win streak, Varane-Ramos played every game with Casemiro in front of them.  Then a lot of injuries happened to our CBs and Nacho started to play a lot of CB... not to mention Carvajal getting his issues too.  Casemiro getting a major injury was a massive factor too.

Second issue is that you don't have the luxury of implementing a lot of different styles given the profiles of our midfield and BBC.  You're limited to what the team can execute.

Said this in the general section... too many so called "great" managers try to force their style regardless of squad. That's stupid to me. You implement the style that is best suited to what you have to give yourself the best chance to win. End of. We're a counter attacking team at our best... so if we can take a lead, force the opponent to come at us and then counter... that's our ideal situation. We don't have dribblers that can break through traffic other than Marcelo and Isco. So without dribbling, we need to open space some other way.

Loll attributing win streak to playing Varane

We had an unbeaten streak that ended because Benz thought he was a trequatista and it was further confirmed when Zaza sent Varane to the treatment room

We had an unbeaten run, and it didn't matter who we started because we scored alot of last min goals.

We have kept 9 clean sheets in all competitions this season lol. Atleti have that amount in CL only nevermind the league

I didn't watch it at all as I announced, honestly, and I couldn't care less, not even going to start etc, but I have to concede that Real played pretty great yesterday.

halamadrid2 wrote:Loll attributing win streak to playing Varane

We had an unbeaten streak that ended because Benz thought he was a trequatista and it was further confirmed when Zaza sent Varane to the treatment room

We had an unbeaten run, and it didn't matter who we started because we scored alot of last min goals.

We have kept 9 clean sheets in all competitions this season lol. Atleti have that amount in CL only nevermind the league

All of which were achieved with him in the lineup. We haven't had a clean sheet when he's been out this season. Pepe's been injured mostly too or rusty... and Nacho isn't up to par.