Never have I been so dissapointed at a Madrid side. Seriously, a non-kneejerk thread imo. Zidane is the most boring coach we've had in a long time. Even Ancelotti and Mourinho played better football (for all the shit Mourinho gets, he played some amazing counter attacking football)

Our shit strategy is to cross balls and to hope that something happens, which is boring and shitty. Our midfield struggles every time, we look really sloppy and our midfield can not connect with our offense despite having the best midfield in the world. (in my humble opinion, our midfield isn't really lacking anything but proper coaching) We mostly score by headers and set pieces, rather than open field goals.

And his subs... man his subs... I don't think I need to explain myself.

We have issues with our defense, we let by some stupid goals, we could definitely improve in the defense area. We make plenty mistakes here.

But to be fair, his motivating seems top notch and it's not that he doesn't seem good (his winning ratio speaks for itself) I just don't think he is suited for Madrid. EPL seems to be his place

Sounds like some one is a bit spoiled.

We have had one of our best streaks in club history under Zizu. Whether you agree with the tactics or not, we have gotten results.

IMO I have loved the way we have played and I think you are seriously reducing it to "cross balls and hope something happens." That is not our play at all. We are much more balanced and actually have a midfield under Zidane.

And subs- our subs won the match against Sporting Lisbon, so yes I think you should explain yourself.

Defense - we have been having defensive mistakes for as long as I remember, definitely not ZZ specific. Ramos is a rash player and we just have to live with it.

I liked how we played overall under Carlo, but if you are going to complain about midfield right after praising Mourinho I think you need to go back and watch how we played- there was a void a mile wide between attack and defense under Mou.

All in all, this thread IS knee-jerk (after a win, anyways). It is far too early in the season to start knit picking. The numbers speak for themselves- he has the highest win percentage out of any RM manager in recent history.

Interesting. I think you have an incredibly harsh outlook on this version of Madrid but your opinion is your opinion so I can't change that.

Some of the greatest teams to ever grace a football field used wing play to full effect. Don't think that should be looked down upon and set piece goals are valued the same way as a 30 pass goal down the middle i.e 1. I actually appreciate the variety of play this team brings and that Zidane clearly wants a more solid, conservative approach than the gung-ho ways of the past in certain matches.

That being said, I admit, we can be boring sometimes. We don't really leave much to the imagination or do our players show the guile I would expect from supposed flair types. And even that conservative, Serie A-esque approach can be dull and sometimes, the wrong approach but that is how football can be.

But I always remember reading that Madrid is about winning and we are winning. And we are not playing bad football, not exactly great football but good football nonetheless. And yeah, we can do better but at the moment, this is fine for me.

Anyway, not the worst Madrid I have seen, not by a long shot. Seen from awful Madrid teams before. To me, Zidane is fine. If he continues to improve, I expect the team to improve as well.

Also, this maybe the most docile post you may get for such a rather bold statement so...

Name a side that played worse football than Zidanes Madrid? Look at our goals so far. Especially with this midfield and attack ffs

I agree with Adit on the Sporting Gijon Match thread btw, his positional play is shit. I don't know why Zidane is so stuck to always sit deep, it's like he wants to conserve energy to the last bit of the match every game. Maybe that's why we score late winners all the time

BTW I never disagreed with the results. I just think his football style doesn't suit Madrid. It's boring

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf0tVCs2xFQ

This was Madrid with Mourinho. We played some great counter attacks with Mourinho

you must have a short history....and when i say short, i mean you must have started watching madrid as of january this year (which based on your posts, i don't think is the case), or be having a bout of convenient amnesia; because that rafa side was to me disgusting. besides, this season isn't even halfway yet

but for the sake of banter, there have been some atrocious madrid sides. the worst madrid sides i have ever seen would include in no order; schuster/juande ramos' madrid, schuster's madrid that won la liga, luxemborgo/lopez caro's madrid, hiddink/toshack's madrid, del bosque's madrid that won the ucl in paris (no fault of del bosque's but he came into a team that used to make sports news every week for the wrong reasons).

capello's madrid in his second stint was bad too, more guts than skill, and for the first half of the season were absolutely terrible to watch. emerson and diarra in midfield; a tired, out of form raul playing on the right, he'd have games where he wouldn't even touch the ball, a brilliant van nistelrooy up front; and capello would constantly rotate who the second striker and left wingers were- could be ronaldo, cassano, robinho, reyes, higuain later on, or guti playing left attacking mid. they were so bad, capello resorted to giving whistling fans the finger. and the just crowned world player of they year, looked like a fourth division defender, emerson spewing abuses at fans when he scored a lucky goal against celta vigo, i think we even lost that game

the team that had camacho/ramon garcia/luxemborgo also deserves to be on this list, that side was just ruined by poor coaching and presidential decisions. like signing graveson to play the makelele role. we usually call defensive midfielders destroyers, but graveson was a psycho, i think i remember him even tackling one of our players by mistake. i can't remember the exact years, i just remember the coaching carousel.

Well, I was gonna mention the stuff Tito wrote about more awful Madrid sides but like the historian he is, did it for me.

You say our look at our goals? Man, I watched Getafe dominate us under Schuster. Getafe. F-ing Getafe. The Ferrari boys literally chased Hiddink out of Madrid. The man told Sanz he could not deal with this shit no more. This edition is not even in the same universe from those cancer inducing versions Tito just mentioned.

I'm actually upset just remembering how bad they were.

lol remember when we lost 1-6 to milito's zaragoza, and who can forget the alcorcon debacle. i'm not even going further back to the two or three years before raul emerged cos many on here might be too young. losses to alcorcon, union, recreativo huelva forwards taking cannavaro to school. at madrid we've had some very funny moments in retrospect. if someone like raul (who experienced most of these things), wrote a book and included all these details, i'd pay good money to read it. i'd like to know the discussion at the end of the game when teams like recreativo take the world footballer of the year in cannavaro to school

Was that CDR semi final where we scored 4 goals within 15 minutes and not for life or love couldn't score the 5th goal in the 2nd leg? And how can I forget (I didn't) Recreativo putting us to the sword. At home. Pre-Raul days, I don't think I was even watching football but I read we blew the title to Las Palmas on the final day during the Dream Team era of Barcelona.

Fun times.

Funny also how Guest says Zidane is the worst Madrid he has seen since Zidane himself was honestly part of way worse.

Tbf to guest7 you also have to look at the talent. The some of the previous RM side you guys are speaking of didn't have this kind of talent today.

Guest7 with the worst op in the history of GL literally

It seems to me only guest7 and adit are complaining about our style of play and I read a few blogs and forums too. And with how harsh us RM fans are how come we are all happy enough with the way we are playing. Have you ever thought that maybe you are overreacting. People like to mention Carlo's Madrid as the best we have played in years but do you guys even remember how bad Bale and Benz played?? We were getting booed right and left. Even Modric was criticised

Stop being so dramatic

We always had massive talent since Flo took over. It wasn't balanced... but we have been a galactico team for 15 years now almost.

Even when Zidane left, we had Raul, Guti, Sneijder, Robben, Van Nistelrooy, Cannavaro, Guti, Iker, etc.

This thread sucks so badly that I won't even address it.

I'll add that Carlo's first 5 months on the job were awful.... horrible. We played like absolute crap and dropped points left and right. Heck, despite looking great to start the season, we sucked in league play during Carlo's second year too. He burned our squad out so badly that half our team was injured or running on fumes come the end of the season... and his man management was so poor that nobody on the bench had the confidence to come in and play well.

lol OP. Just lol on this topic.

Look who you are comparing Zidane with ffs, he is clearly up there with the worst. And he has had the most talented squad yet so far

And c'mon, all that name calling and trash talking isn't doing squat. This is a legit discussion, look at the possession stats. I think Zidane has the worst passing stats of 10 years

When you make laughable statements like that please back it up. Worst passing stats how old are you

I couldn't disagree more with your statement. I respect it, but I couldn't disagree more, and here's why:

First of all, if we're talking purely football here, I should remind you that during the first five games under Z's reign, we played godly football. And when I say "godly", I mean it was the best in Europe. Breathtakingly beautiful football of the highest order. It just so happened that we leaked so many goals as well, and he was coerced into sacrificing the aesthetic side for a more conservative, defensively stable approach. So it's not like he's unable to make his team play like gods (because he did), it's more like he's trying to find a balance between the defense and offense...and his win percentage is testimony to that.

Secondly, Z is worshiped by his players, so much that he made Ronaldo and Bale track back, and had no problems benching high profile players and picking his starting eleven without any interference from upstairs. I'd say he's the only manager under Florentino's presidency (excluding Mourinho) to have had full control. But the difference between him and the Portuguese manager is that he's able to bench whoever he wants without creating any dressing room rifts.

My only problem with him lies in the absence of a tactical plan when it comes to breaking defenses in the final third. Maybe with time, he'll figure it out.

It's funny you brought up Mourinho because he has always been known for playing boring football. And I'd choose Z over that classless, arrogant manager any day of the week.

I really wish I had the passing stats for teams that were coached by Luxemburgo, Lopez Caro, Camacho, Carlos Quieroz.

The underrating of Mourinho is laughable. Arrogant and classless is the new synonym for honest and brave ? In his second season we played some of the best football in Europe. That speed on the break was breathtaking to watch.

Yes, underrating him would be laughable. Except I didn't underrate him, I didn't question his competence or expertise.

All I did was criticize his antics; which I think need no introduction.

I respect that you think so highly of him, but not all of us think like you do.

I've seen enough of him to genuinely believe he's cancer who brings death wherever he goes, and I truly, honestly pray to god he never coaches Real Madrid again.

It's best to read op before we react! It does say "In my history", which pretty well says his history is less than a year!!! Obviously a very young child.

For instance how can you say that Benitez's squad was better than Zidane?

Noone on this forum has more history with Real Madrid than me, including Tito and I agree 100% with him re the teams / coaches he mentioned and I could also name some prior, but none of you would know anything about the 50s, 60s and 70s.

it already has been posted on why Zidane is playing like he is with much more balance than Mourinho, Carlo or Rafa. We all would like more offensive play, but not if it will cost us goals and points.

You have to bear in mind that this is still the beginning of the season and that some of the players especially the front three are not in form. We have been getting the results with the reserves (Morata,Lucas, Asensio).
Zidane has encorporated everyone in squad into contributing to team. That in itself let alone the fighting attitude is a major imrovement from the previously 3 coaches.

I would agree the biggest problem right now is Marcelo. What he needs now is competition and we can hope that Nacho and within next month Coentrao to give him some pressure.

It was stated all summer long that the midfield of Modric and Kroos, although both are good, if not great, are too much alike to have any verticality. I believe that is why Isco and James are on the squad and we can expect both of them to start showing what they really can do or not and thus give us that verticality we need. We did see a bit of that from James the other day. But it's up to Zidane to find some sort of rotation to have these two included in a performing team, yet not bench Kroos or Modric continually and still have the defensive balance we need. I believe that is the main task that Zidane has to work on including improving the play, both offensively and defensively of both of them.

That plus a return to form of Benzema and Ronaldo (and Bale to a certain extent) should resolve the concerns.

But overall, it is a way too early to be this critical and skeptical.

Nick don't act shy, I know u wanna comment on this topic

Unless we get a complete meltdown, this would be 16 wins in a row in La Liga equaling Pep's all conquering 2010-2011 Barcelona side. Not bad for the worst Madrid side someone has ever seen.

But all we do is cross and hope for the best..