Espanyol vs Real Madrid

That said... this is the midfield that has taken over from Alonso-Khedira. So we've made massive progress in terms of ball playing ability compared to those two (although I personally underrated Alonso a lot now that I look back on it). Di Maria brought balance that we don't have there though... he was the perfect player for us in terms of a left side B2B.

I'm still unbelievably salty that Flo sold Di Maria. Another one in the long list of "wtf is he thinking!" moves from Flo.

As much as I would love to blame Florentino, but that wasn't his fault; or at least not entirely. He wasn't planning on selling him at all. But Di Maria thought he was bigger than the club and deluded himself into thinking he could bully Madrid into giving him a better contract even though he had just renewed it a year before. How stupid do you have to be to think you can renegotiate your contract one year after you had put pen to papers?

You know our policy, if you ask to leave, you'll be sold.

Great talent no doubt; but his attitude is sickening.

Three good months and he quickly forgot that Real Madrid came close to selling him, and they would've had, hadn't Ronaldo told them to keep him.

It's a shame that his greed and ingratitude outweigh his talent. But I have no sympathy for mercenaries, so good riddance.

di maria did deserve a better contract. if not for anything his performance that season. the mega signing bale wasn't looking so good at one point even that first season. flo went for james hype after a couple games at the world cup....just ridiculous, considering we were not even remotely linked to james that season. i blame ancelotti too. di maria came through for him when we went through the first month looking confused, and he barely did anything to convince flo he was making a mistake, he even took a jab at di maria after he went to utd

You guys are reinventing history. Every single year that DiMaria was here, he was after a raise. Every year! Most years he would wait until he arrived back home in Argentina and then tried to negotiate thru the press! This despite the fact that he was a bust at Madrid. In fact he only had 3 to 6 months of good futbol in all his time here. Maybe there was a case for him for some increase, but he was demanding a salary comparable to Bale and even close to Ronaldo!

Sports likes to say Flo errored in getting rid of him (he didn't he just didn't meet the demand) and also complains he didn't go after Pogba, but the reality is there is a definite salary ladder at club and he isn't going to destroy that for some mercenary. If he did, then suddenly you have problems with several players!

I do agree that James was a bad replacement, but that really has nothing to do with DiMaria's departure.

Seems all you DiMaria supporters are remembering a few good months and not looking at his overall career. He was lousy for us for most of his time here, was an evolving talent in Portugal, awful at ManU, and had a good season last year at Psg.
This year so far is questionable at best. He seems to be in a rotation with Jese at the moment!! Think about that for a moment before saying he is the superstar you guys want him to be.

titosantill wrote:di maria did deserve a better contract. if not for anything his performance that season. the mega signing bale wasn't looking so good at one point even that first season. flo went for james hype after a couple games at the world cup....just ridiculous, considering we were not even remotely linked to james that season. i blame ancelotti too. di maria came through for him when we went through the first month looking confused, and he barely did anything to convince flo he was making a mistake, he even took a jab at di maria after he went to utd

He didn't deserve shit. Holy feck we are talking about a greedy mercenary who in 4 seasons here only performed in the first half of 11/12 and the second half of 13/14, for which he is treated as some kind of unsung hero while he wasn't even close to being as good as he is talked about. Modric, Alonso, Ramos and Ronaldo were easily our best and most important performers that season. Can't believe there are still people crying out for that guy who never showed any kind of loyalty to our club, or any club for that matter. We're talking about a footballer who used his so called dream club MU to get his fat paycheck in obscurity at the mighty PSG. Do we need this kind of players with no ambition ? Hell no, I'd rather watch the likes of Lucas Vasquez. Good riddance.

And again we forget how good kovacic has looked playing a b2b role, and he's young. Kroos will lose his place to him if kova keeps improving. But no, let's get pogba or an inconsistent mercenary called di Maria; and it's not even like pogba has lit up the place at Man U.

i'm not talking about his rw days. him in midfield was a move that worked, and based on that, having exactly what the coach wanted, i'd have given a raise and ignored signing james, that simple...even financially it was a FOOLISH move. two, didn't higuain also seek a raise multiple times? nobody bashed him for that. players need to know their worth, its a business, as a footballer, madrid is not your parent, spouse or sibling. when you can't cut it anymore we'll look elsewhere, in the blink of an eye. this idea that a player shouldn't seek a raise because he's at madrid is strange, kinda cultish...its not like he's getting cards and giving out PKs all over the place

players see people performing less than them making a lot of money, and you think it shouldn't come across them to seek something better? we pay james almost six million a season, we spent 80 million to get him, and he's been lounging on the bench. yet an increase in di maria's wages would have crumbled our economic bedrock. kaka was on the bench, earning much more than him, bale wasn't necessarily outshining him, but he was earning a lot more than him too. but because this is madrid, he should be a good boy and not seek a raise


disagree on all those players you mentioned being better than him that season....maybe besides alonso and cristiano. he wasn't our best player all through the time he was here, but guys are acting like we were playing with some scrub who was holding the team down. even though our top assistant mr. ozil would get tired exactly 60 mins into every game. you know when cristiano stopped his "i am sad" movement? after he signed a new deal....and no, i would not have suggested signing pogba for 120 million. hell i wouldn't have signed both zidane and vieira for that price in 2001, even though they are both better than him

you work at a real estate firm you're always getting patted on the back for performance, someone's not bringing in as much contacts as you, yet they're making a lot more. but because you are in a top firm, you'll sit and watch without seeking a raise? lol get real people

Iirc ADM was making as little as our Castilla players when he arrived. Then he got a raise and still got less than the starters around him. After that he was promised anothet raise, but it was pushed to the next season and when we won LaDecima he bit off more than he could chew asking for a exorbitant amount and I blame his greedy agent and we sold him. Before he was sold ADM was only getting €4.5mill that's basically Jese territory while the ones around him were getting at least €6mill. When he was signed he was on €2.5mill lmao. That's basically our Castilla players when they get promoted. Anyhow he is gone now and I like our new midfield. It's perfect

Re-ADM's time with us, numbers spak for themselves. He was the third highest assist maker during his time with us only Özil and Messi had higher. This is a guy who used to assist as much as top strikers used to score. He was an unbelievable player who I miss but he chose money and I respect his decision

Barca play Atleti on Wednesday. It's imperative we get wins against both Espanyol and Villarreal so that we can get further away from the other two teams before we play them.

ZZ's biggest task this season is improving our h2h against the tough teams that Carlo had us struggle against.

A win against Atleti, a draw against Barca, a win against Villarreal, a win against Sevilla, a win against Valencia and a win against Bilbao is the bare minimum i expect from us.

Simply gettinh a deaw vs Atleti would mean he hasn't really improved our record against them. History has shown that we split our wins of the Clasico with Barca. If we win the first one we tend to lose the second and vice versa so we need to improve on that record too

Funnily enough I am so confident I don't think we will lose until the clasico. ZZ has instilled such character in our team i struggle to see a point in the schedule where we might lose. It helps that the back ups as effective as the starters too. There is alot of things you can criticise ZZ for but squad management and result arent one of them. This is the same guy that doesn't play Ronaldo because he has a sore throat lol

halamadrid2 wrote:Iirc ADM was making as little as our Castilla players when he arrived. Then he got a raise and still got less than the starters around him. After that he was promised anothet raise, but it was pushed to the next season and when we won LaDecima he bit off more than he could chew asking for a exorbitant amount and I blame his greedy agent and we sold him. Before he was sold ADM was only getting  €4.5mill that's basically Jese territory while the ones around him were getting at least €6mill. When he was signed he was on €2.5mill lmao. That's basically our Castilla players when they get promoted. Anyhow he is gone now and I like our new midfield. It's perfect

Re-ADM's time with us, numbers spak for themselves. He was the third highest assist maker during his time with us only Özil and Messi had higher. This is a guy who used to assist as much as top strikers used to score. He was an unbelievable player who I miss but he chose money and I respect his decision

4.5m is Xabi range. Was he better and more important than Xabi ? Or than Modric ? And iirc we didn't let him go because he wanted a raise, but for he wanted Bale-like wages

These were our salaries in the last year of ADM and he was our most important player in his last year. It was pretty criminal how low his wages were compared to the players around him and they didn't put nearly as much effort as him on the pitch.

http://www.tsmplug.com/football/real-madrid-players-salaries-2014/

Most important player

Di Maria was a headless chicken until he moved to the B2B role in his last season... there is absolutely no doubt about that.  But once we FINALLY settled ADM in a position where he was consistently great and that perfectly fit our needs... we turned around and sold him  Typical Real Madrid.

And yes, he kept asking for a raise.  At the time, I thought it was BS.  But then I looked into other stars and how they conducted business.  Rooney demanded and got raises constantly.  So did Ibra and Silva at PSG.  

When you reach a certain standing, you can and, frankly, should throw your weight around.  There is no loyalty to a club as a club has no loyalty to a player.  It's all about having a mutually beneficial professional relationship.  It is a professional's job to get paid the most he possibly can at the best company willing to meet his demands.  It's that simple.  It's capitalism.

Just want to mention, a lot of it is personal, but count most is the coaching. Alonso is doing significantly better as DLP with Bayern being older than he was with us because of the positional football Bayern play as a team and the way they are able to occupy the pitch and to dominate possession with numbers.

I dont know when we last had a coach that offered our team that level of pitch occupation on a collective level, maybe Del Bosque.

I felt that for a long time and i continue to feel that way, at some point we need to bring in someone who has a PhD in positional football and that will take this team appreciation for spacing and pitch occupation to the next level.

I hope to see the squad fired up from the get-go tonight. Falling behind in score and then trying to get back into the game is a loser mentality.

Play with grit and passion from the first second and try to wrap up the game as soon as possible.

Dropping points tonight is not an option; we have to capitalize on Barça's last week defeat, maintain the three-point lead and keep on trying to widen the gap even further.

Losing is not an option, unless we want to not win the league again.

@Nick... you need to play high line to control the ball like Bayern, City and Barca. Our defense can't handle playing a high line because you need to then pressure the ball relentlessly to block passes.  If you let the opponent settle and pick out a pass with a high line, you're dead.

This requires that everyone pay attention on defense and make sure they get up on the ball if it's close to them.   With BBC and Kroos, I don't think we can do that.  Before, you had the same issue with Khedira, Ronaldo, Benzema and Ozil who were hopeless pressuring the ball.

Nothing to do with the manager...  we don't have the personnel in the sense that we have too many galacticos that feel they're beneath putting this sort of effort.

There's a reason Kroos left Bayern btw.

sportsczy wrote:@Nick... you need to play high line to control the ball like Bayern, City and Barca.  Our defense can't handle playing a high line because you need to then pressure the ball relentlessly to block passes.  If you let the opponent settle and pick out a pass with a high line, you're dead.

This requires that everyone pay attention on defense and make sure they get up on the ball if it's close to them.   With BBC and Kroos, I don't think we can do that.  Before, you had the same issue with Khedira, Ronaldo, Benzema and Ozil who were hopeless pressuring the ball.

Nothing to do with the manager...  we don't have the personnel in the sense that we have too many galacticos that feel they're beneath putting this sort of effort.

There's a reason Kroos left Bayern btw.

Playing positional football requires a lot more than playing a high line...Our personel is more than good enough to do it, but what we lack is the brain the put it together.

Positional football doesnt mean that you have to play gegenpressing and rush to the ball carrier all the time. You can defend deep if it's better for your team. It's more about how you occupy the space and use possession when you have it.

Kroos left Bayern to get paid, not because he can't play juego de posicion pep's way. I thought he showed that very clearly in his first season with Pep in Bayern. Bale puts in effort, and according to most here so does Benzema. If there is a diva, it's Ronaldo and we can live with that. We have the personel, what we dont have is the "right" type of manager.

There is a telling sign of how average this team in terms of their understanding of certain concepts, it's the way they play the ball from behind. We are pretty average at it. And we saw against Celta, when they were pressing man to man, except for Modric individual driving the ball forward with dribbling, we were struggling like hell. We have close to 0 concepts of movements to create passing lanes from deep to move the ball forward.

Zidane isnt the type of coach to teach that to this team, because he simply cant. If he could, we would have seen it consistently by now. We would have seen players that move in between lines to open passing lanes and to would not struggle as much to play the ball from the back.

But it's ok, Zizou doesnt need it be successful clearly, he is a very good manager, ala Carlo. But there are things he cant do. This theory in that he is toning it down to "balance" the team is bunch of bollocks.

Kinda feeling bad that I am here thinking our players don't have the sense to do what Nick wrote while Nick who can be so cynical, thinks otherwise.

Kroos probably but that's about it.

well, when i see lads like fernandinho, sterling, sagna, etc... execute what pep is asking off them very effectly, assimilating new concepts and moving the ball extremely, excuse me if i digress. Are you gus going to tell me that De Bruyne or Silva have more football intelligence then Modric or Kroos? we are talking about the top 1% of football brains here.

We have the midfield for it, the defenders for it (varane and ramos both tremendous passers from the back), and the forwards too (isnt Benzema god's gift with passing and decisions?). If it's not happening it's because management is incapable of doing it. Again, it's not a detriment to the team being successful on the pitch. Zidane focuses on a lot of the same things as Carlo, team spirit, team unity, family, defending together etc...

I don't agree that our players can't play positional football. Give this squad to Pep and he would make wonders with them.

Z is a manager with limitations, that's all there is to it.

Line up:


Surprised by the lack of rotation in the backline. I hope to God ZZ isnt thinking of starting Danilo against Villarreal because this would've been the perfect game for Danilo to start. But I guess he was weary after Barca got done having done too many rotations

why is Benzema starting when morata is more game ready and scoring atm?

Don't understand why Carvajal wasn't rested. Case and Modric should've been rested as well. Kova and Danilo should've started this one, and maybe Isco as well.

Also Benzema? Given the fact that he's unfit, he should've been brought in in the second half with Morata taking the starting spot.

Z should've rotated more here.

He needs quality minutes to get match fit, starting him makes sense, Suarez to lewa same thing why shocked?

because the same thing can be achieved by playing him in second half when the other team has tired legs.

HIguain starts from the bench right now to build his fitness

besides, dont compare Benzema to Suarez, that's an insult nowadays, Suarez is miles better