Real Madrid vs Sporting Lisbon

On Wednesday we finally kickstart our CL title defence with a home match against Sporting. Sporting have won all their opening four games of the season including a home win agsinst their rivals Porto. They managed to hold onto Slimani despite his rumoured departure to Leicester.

ZZ has confirmed that Ronaldo will only play 60 minutes. With Ronaldo and Benzema back, I wonder who misses out.

Probable line up:


Bench is probably going to be:

Yanez, Danilo,Varane, Kovacic, Morata/Benz, Lucas and James with Asensio and Nacho missing out

Correction. Slimani is definetly with Leicester. Lol

you are right. Thought the transfer failed to go through.

Well then, we are going to have the pleasure of facing Bas Dost instead

Hala, I think you are right re Nacho (it's him or Danilo) not being on bench, but I think Asensio makes bench and the other player sitting out is either James or Lucas!

With the team this year with everyone playing well, I think we are going to have a lot of surprises with players not making to bench. With everyone healthy, James, Lucas, Mariano, Asensio, James, Isco, Kova, Coentrao, Nacho and Danilo are all candidates.

Hala, you were right. It is Asensio left out (along with Nacho, Isco and Mariano).

Hoping Modric bags a couple assists in this game. Need the points in UCL fantasy football.

Now James taking up Asensio's playing time..

I expect the strongest starting 11, Varane replacing Pepe.
James in for Modric or Kroos.
Vasquez for Ronaldo
Morata for Benzema or Bale.

May the best team win..
you know who that is

We play 8 games this month. We should rotate. Kroos should sit this one out or be subbed early. Need him at peak form throughout this season. Varane should come in for Ramos

Benz needs to go out. He has been a disaster. Ronaldo has been poor too. Evertytime we have the ball on the wings there is no CF in the box to cross to. ZZ needs to make at least 1 ht sub. Bar the forward line everything else has been perfect. Marcelo seems to have had his grove back and Kroos is continuing his excellent form

Cr and Benzema both of them completely crap so far. Need to make some changes.

this is just something else

what kind of straight shot is that? morata basically just passed it to the goalie

Should have brought Morata on for Benzema at half time. He has brought some spark we were missing.

a good free kick, let's see if we can steal 3 points

Thank you morata

a better showing in the last 30 minutes. we became a lot more direct, instead of just recycling possession

Morata completely changed the game after he came on.

Not good display From the team, way too static. No off the ball movement and lazy forwards.

What a come back though.

i'm still kinda pissed morata passed that ball to the goalkeeper. but that was a brilliant header, he played with an attitude. good cross from james too, and clutch cristiano free kick. i didn't like our overall game though. too lethargic; the subs were a lot more direct, (i thought lucas had a good showing at least trying to go at players) better than just passing side to side hoping for an outlet

We created absolutely nothing for SIXTYFIVE whole minutes out there and then created gazillion chances when the subs came on. I dont even need to tell you why. The right side went from desertion to our most used wing, i dont need to tell you why, we had a target man to cross to, i dont need to tell you why. ZZ should kiss Ronaldo and Morata on their foreheads. He was dragging with the subs. I felt it took him too long to make them

But lord our fighting spirit under ZZ even the fans didnt stop singing and applauded our guys despite some of them deserving of being booed

We need to keep clean sheets ffs. We wont score last min goals all the time

Marcelo really really really needs to clean up his act defensively at least a little bit. He got raped all game long. Sporting shot itself in the foot when they took the winger on his side out.

We can't keep clean sheets with Marcelo playing like this on defense. It's not possible unless we get lucky.

Horrific showing from benzema and Marcelo. Morata is starting to nick the goals. If it continues he will start over Benz

Well benz couldn't move until 10 days ago with bad hip and knee... he shouldn't have started. He's just not physically fit enough yet. Let him actually build up some cardio. Hasn't played since May really. Looks actually heavy right now.

you saw when marcelo thought doing a trick pass deep in the area was the most sensible thing to do? i think we even lost the ball not too long after that. i understand that we want to be better with possession, but sometimes i feel it gets us too sluggish, everyone thinks the opposition will suddenly get bored and let us walk the ball into the net. all the subs played well. that was a brilliant free kick; i wanted james to take it though, i expected it to hit the wall, even though cristiano has been doing a bit better at them of late

@hala, you do need to tell us why, i'd like to read some assessments about the game. i do agree we played rubbish for the first 60 odd minutes, totally lacked ideas out there

I only saw from the 74th minute but I can tell just by the aura coming from my TV that Benzema & Ronaldo were dragging the flag, we kept having sterile, Fabregas in a 4-3-3 possession and Marcelo was probably getting murdered on the flanks constantly.

Logs into GL and I read exactly what I thought. I need Hala to tell me what I need to know because I missed most of the match.

Also, Benny and Ronaldo dragging the flag makes sense since neither is not up to match fitness as yet. Also, what had happen to Bale?

Doc... missed nothing the first 65 mins.  Sporting flooded our midfield and none of our 3 mids have the capacity to handle pressure (Modric tried but wasn't having a great game).  So you ended up having zero service from them.  BBC...  Benz and Ronaldo aren't fit and Bale was left all alone to create, which he couldn't do.  Defensively, Marcelo was pathetic and Ramos made a small mistake on the goal (mostly on Marcelo though since he got raped and Ramos wasn't able to cover well enough on that occasion).

Vasquez came on for Bale and, against a tired Sporting, his speed made the difference.  Started getting great crosses in.  Morata... same thing.  He brought in speed and energy against a tiring team and did very well.  James came on for Kroos and we actually started to break the lines in the midfield.  

Again, another big change was that Sporting took out the winger that was murdering Marcelo around the 70 min mark too. That allowed our entire defense to push up as opposed to worrying about him.