Barcelona without Messi vs Real without Ronaldo

Real Madrid would play better without Ronaldo.

Their best team would be this:


Manchester United supporter here, so I know what I'm talking about when it comes to Ronaldo and being better without him. Team above is the one Guardiola would pick, I imagine. He'd axe Ronaldo just like he axed Ronaldinho. Terrifically talented but horribly wasteful players with poor footballing brains.

Ronaldo has 82% passing accuracy, 72% long pass accuracy, 58% defensive action success rate, 51% dribble success rate, 43% through ball accuracy, 40% shot accuracy and 22% cross accuracy. Of everything that he attempts on the football field, just 67% of it is successful.

He doesn't have any outstanding attributes apart from his physique. However, that's not all. You would imagine that a player with that set of abilities would spend most of his time playing safe short passes, avoid playing long passes, help out a little bit defensively and play the occassional shot or through ball when a decent opportunity arises. That's what a player with a footballing brain would do. His abilities are suited to being a striker for a lower half premier league team. But such is his sheer determination to be the gloryboy, he built himself up physically and now we have this beautiful monstrosity who has managed to convince the biggest two clubs in the world and two of the greatest managers of all time to build their teams around him. Credit to him for achieving that and convincing 90% of football fans that he's the second best player in the world.

Ronaldo - Mr. Disaster. He'll put on a spectacular show of everything that's good about football and everything that's bad about football all in one game, making absolutely zero contribution to his team in the process. The player who guarantees that he'll score you a goal a game, and cost you a goal a game. Great. But hey he scores 50 goals a season, that's gre - oh wait.

Nice to meet you all.

MindGames7 wrote:Real Madrid would play better without Ronaldo.

Their best team would be this:

Casillas
Arbeloa-Ramos-Pepe-Marcelo
Alonso
Sahin-Khedira
Ozil-Benzema-Kaka

Manchester United supporter here, so I know what I'm talking about when it comes to Ronaldo and being better without him. Team above is the one Guardiola would pick, I imagine. He'd axe Ronaldo just like he axed Ronaldinho. Terrifically talented but horribly wasteful players with poor footballing brains.

Ronaldo has 82% passing accuracy, 72% long pass accuracy, 58% defensive action success rate, 51% dribble success rate, 43% through ball accuracy, 40% shot accuracy and 22% cross accuracy. Of everything that he attempts on the football field, just 67% of it is successful.

He doesn't have any outstanding attributes apart from his physique. However, that's not all. You would imagine that a player with that set of abilities would spend most of his time playing safe short passes, avoid playing long passes, help out a little bit defensively and play the occassional shot or through ball when a decent opportunity arises. That's what a player with a footballing brain would do. His abilities are suited to being a striker for a lower half premier league team. But such is his sheer determination to be the gloryboy, he built himself up physically and now we have this beautiful monstrosity who has managed to convince the biggest two clubs in the world and two of the greatest managers of all time to build their teams around him. Credit to him for achieving that and convincing 90% of football fans that he's the second best player in the world.

Ronaldo - Mr. Disaster. He'll put on a spectacular show of everything that's good about football and everything that's bad about football all in one game, making absolutely zero contribution to his team in the process. The player who guarantees that he'll score you a goal a game, and cost you a goal a game. Great. But hey he scores 50 goals a season, that's gre - oh wait.

Nice to meet you all.

The fact that you put alonso with no real defensive cover and ozil on the wing along with kaka shows me you have no idea what you are talking about.. infact kaka doesn't deserve to lick higuains boots

Arbeloa-ramos-pepe-marcelo
alonso-khedira
di maria-ozil-benzema
higuain

Not too hard.. benzema plays left wing quite well.

A more interesting question would be, if you replaced both Ronaldo and Barca with Aguero (or an equivalent), who was the better team? Because obviously if both Madrid and Barca didn't have their stars, they would sign others in that position.

Giggity5313 wrote:The fact that you put alonso with no real defensive cover and ozil on the wing along with kaka shows me you have no idea what you are talking about.. infact kaka doesn't deserve to lick higuains boots

Arbeloa-ramos-pepe-marcelo
alonso-khedira
di maria-ozil-benzema
higuain

Not too hard.. benzema plays left wing quite well.

The fact that you would play Di Maria, Higuain and Benzema all together in your first choice XI suggests to me that you are the one that doesn't know what you're talking about.

Don't get me wrong, it would be great playing that line-up in a home game against a team in the lower half of la liga, but those three players are all just as wasteful as Ronaldo really.

The reason that Real Madrid haven't done so well in the Champions League in recent times is because they play with so many players that give the ball away, and you can't afford to do that against top quality opposition because it means you'll have to do a lot more chasing after the ball and unless you have players like Darren Fletcher and Park Ji-Sung in your team who can run around all day, you'll get tired out and start leaving gaps in defence eventually. The most successful teams in the Champions League have either been brilliant in posssession (Barcelona, AC Milan) or had lots of energy to run around after them (Chelsea, Man Utd, Liverpool, Inter).

Also, with regards to the issue that you have with no defensive cover... he's in a three man midfield, and he's very good defensively, so he should have no issue with that at all. It's like saying that Pirlo has no defensive cover when he plays with Chiellini and Barzagli behind him and Marchisio and Vidal ahead of him, or saying that Carrick has no defensive cover when he plays with Ferdinand and Vidic behind him and Fletcher and Anderson ahead of him. I put Alonso in the deepest role because he's both competent defensively and brilliant at distributing the ball.

With regards to Ozil and Kaka on the wings... they'd both have a license to roam really, when Real are on the ball. They're the most accurate crossers in your team, statistically, and the most creative players, they're both quick and great passers, and are great on a counter attack compared to the forwards you mentioned that are quick but most of the time will give the ball away and . Imagine Pepe wins the ball back, Alonso comes deep to recive it and sprays a pass out to the right hand side to Ozil. Ozil plays a 1-2 with Benzema and then crosses it in to Kaka who's come inside to score the goal. It would be much better how they play at the moment.

If you're not happy with the team I suggested then maybe a diamand would make your mouth water...


But that wouldn't be a team for beating Barcelona, the first one would.

with messi or without barcelona is going down
or its already down should i say

thank god the super-cup is close, we will all realize who has the edge now

allthough messi has more impact in barca's play than cristiano in madrid's
Specially in classicos

 

Ronaldo does nothing special for R.Madrid. 90% of his goals this season were tapins rebounds and penalties. Any decent striker would replace him easily (at least for this season)

vanos1 wrote:Ronaldo does nothing special for R.Madrid. 90% of his goals this season were tapins rebounds and penalties. Any decent striker would replace him easily (at least for this season)

I somewhat agree. While Cristiano Ronaldo only affects in the finishing aspect of the game for Real Madrid, Messi is just as important in the build up for Barca as he is in the goalscoring aspect.

It's one of the reason why I have so hard time to understand all the people who says that C.Ronaldo is the most complete player in the world.

I didn't bump it for that, I did for the Benzema comments

btw, you must be kidding if you think Ronaldo only contributes in the finishing aspects.

The meaning of 'complete' is subjective. Some people may think being physical and good at headers is complete, while others might prefer someone who can pass and dribble.

Valkyrja wrote:I didn't bump it for that, I did for the Benzema comments

btw, you must be kidding if you think Ronaldo only contributes in the finishing aspects.

While it's true that I don't watch every Real Madrid game, I do watch some and especially against the bigger teams. I have never really been that impressed with C.Ronaldo's overall play, especially not when it's compared to Messi's.

Yohan Modric wrote:The meaning of 'complete' is subjective. Some people may think being physical and good at headers is complete, while others might prefer someone who can pass and dribble.

When I think of a complete player, I think of someone that influence in most parts of a football game. Defending, build up and finishing. Atm the 2 most complete player for me is Vidal and especially Yaya Toure, seems to have everything in his locker, except for stamina.

Ronaldo adds barely anything the team besides drawing an extra defender and scoring alot of goals. Messi draws multiple extra defenders, creates alot, scores alot, tracks back, he does it all. Hes also far far better than Ronaldo overall. Add this to the fact that I think Madrid have a stronger overall team when comparing these two without these 2 and I say Madrid would win. Barcas defense is horrible, its simply made to look good cuz their attack covers up for them by scoring more than the opposition. Take Messi out and the rest of Barcas attackers cant pick up the slack.