Hala Madrid! Hala Zizou!

Hopefully some of our fans here (not naming anyone, you know who you are) can actually appreciate his work.

What a guy. Straight from Algeria too

Undecima baby.

@DoC, I completely agree with you regarding City. They must have been the easiest team we have faced so far in CL. For those of us who watch us in LaLiga this is a typical game away from home against a team like Espanyol. Very little troubles us but we come away with 1/2-0 and people think it was close or whatever. City should be ashamed of themselves, our midfielders hardly broke a sweat all game. A big team would have taken advantage of the lack of DMs to score or st the very least create many chances.

I also agree that we have not been tested thus far in CL but our concentration remains high due to the demanding laliga games we have had to play recently after Barca nearly blew away their title in a month. The most demanding CL game was that against Wolfsburg because of how they beat us by 2-0. Apart from that we have hardly needed to strain for our wins. Good thing is that we have lost to Atleti under Zidane which means we will be 100% focused like we were last season.

If we dont lose the ball unneccesarily or foul them outside the box we should be largly comfortable.

Zidane has exceeded expectations this half season. I wont lie I thought we would go out against Wolfsburg and drop points against Villarreal and LaReal but he and the team proved me wrong. I completely forgot that we dont have Carlo anymore for a second

There are key tactical changes that Zidane has made since we lost to them. One is the introduction of Casemiro which has let Modric and Kroos focus less on the defence because Casemiro is so damn good at winning the ball back and another is using Lucas as the back up for our wingers as opposed to James. We may not create much agaibst them in the final but i can guarantee you we are going to be hard to break down due to how Zidane has everyone working for eachother. Even this last game Ronaldo was chasing every ball in the 2nd half despite not being matchfit. Zidane is the only coach since Ronaldo came to us that has consistently gotten Ronaldo to defend.

Zidane might not be the best tactician but he is a damn good motivator

The biggest achievement i think was getting Ronaldo back to his best. He is as clutch as you could possibly get. When he is happy everybody is happy.

I saw that play lmao, I remember thinking to myself Isco you idiot not outside our box get it away but to my surprise Yata was just standing there, even Fernandinho didnt do enough to try and stop Isco from turning and running away. Pathetic they were

Another stat that will surprise some but not others:

We conceded the least shots from all teams that made the ko round with 9.2 shots on average towards our goal. So eventhough we saw the debacles vs Roma and Wolfsburg we still conceded the least shots. Bayern finished second with 9.8 on average. Alot of the shots that we conceded were hopeful long shots by Griezmann, Henrique and Gustavo.

Keep it up Zizou

Not just that shade. Rafa made fatal mistakes. At the end of the day you choose the players.

1. Playing Danilo
2. Playing deep while trying to play high pressure creating huge spaces that our midfield can't cover. Can you imagine Isco, James and Kroos trying to be workhorses? Didn't think so
3.4-2-4. Nothing more needs to be said
4. Playing bale as a AM. To bales credit, he did well, but playing him at RW/LW will always be much better
5. Our defensive shape was terrible
6. His man management was horrible