Zidane: Best RM manager since VDB

Bring it!!!!!

Those Zidane doubters earlier in the season have crow to eat. Zidane has removed all doubts. RECOGNIZE.

Sports and I meanwhile, will feast on the La Liga pie. Hail to Zidane and our great team. Hala Madrid!

that's factual, no one has won la liga and the CL in 2 years, he won more than mou, more than carlo, more than benitez and all the scrubs pre mou

but this is also the best generation of footballers we have since VDB

I don't agree with that Nick.  Carlo had a better squad imo.  He just didn't use it and it cost him the league... he made it too much about the star players.

Same with Mourinho...   and he made it all about himself as opposed to the team.

Zidane makes it all about winning...  not about the players or himself. It's about everyone coming together to win. 

He's made it about Real Madrid.

Zidane is such a legend. You need to be quite exceptional to do what he's done in football.

He' hasn't been perfect but he has been outstanding.

Well said Sports. Under his management this Madrid side has exemplified what Madrid's "values" are all about.

Great psychology and man/squad management.

Carlo did not have Casemiro, Casemiro is single handily the most important player in this team. this squad is better, the subs are better.

Prime Pepe and Di Maria made the Carlo team better to go along with a much better Benzema... not to mention Bale.

That's on paper at least. That was a star studded team in their absolute prime.

We're winning now with a CR in his 30s, Benzema declining, Pepe being gone, Varane struggling with injuries, Bale injured, etc.

When you need players like Nacho, Danilo, Vasquez, Morata and Asensio to play critical roles, you're not the most talented team in Real Madrid terms. But it does mean you have a lot of belief and fight.

Zidane is a good coach, maybe even a great coach. But it is based on his man management and using entire squad. He is not the tactical genius that Sports makes him out to be, even Zidane himself acnowledges this. He is still learning. He may yet turn into what Spirts is proclaiming, but let's judge this on a couple of years.

carlo had a good squad but didn't utilize it, and didn't fight to keep di maria who was very useful for him in the previous season....that said, i don't know about 'best manager' thing cos its not like we've had an array of fantastic management...but i'm super happy about the title, and credit to zidane for using his squad well. depth and rotation were primarily the reasons we won this title.....not to mention some ramos heroics, but who cares. LA LIGA CHAMPIONS

Zidane always self deprecates... he even talked about himself uncomfortably when he was the greatest player in the world.

He has too much humility and class to ever praise himself. He'll let his performances and others do it for him.

Well, you are right, he is our best winning manager since Don Vicente. And honestly, Zidane could have the tactical acumen of me, Hala, Freeza and Bale combine, he did extremely well with the squad he had and deserve any praise I and us fans can give.

That being said, he does some weird things from time to time and at least 1 brainfart per month.

If he wins the CL, I'll take back everything I have ever said about him.

If he doesn't, I'll be extremely disappointed. Let's face it, we have won La Liga mostly because we were the best team (I agree), but also partly because Barcelona threw away an unprecedented number of points which made our campaign way easier.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking anything away from Z's Madrid, but if you want people to stop doubting him, he has to win the CL this year.

Winning it would make him one of the best managers in the world and would earn him the respect of everybody, including his most ruthless doubters and critics.

Oh wow.  This again.  Here are the point totals of the last 4 La Liga winners:

2014 - Atleti - 90 pts
2015 - Barca - 94 pts
2016 - Barca - 91 pts
2017 - Real Madrid - 93 points

Barca hasn't thrown away any more or any less points than they usually do in a season.  We've just managed to actually avoid a stretch where we throw a season away (which we have done every year since 2012).

Wait hang on, winning the CL would make him "on of the best"??? how about THE best.

Winning two CLs back to back? Heck yeah! It would make him definitely the best manager in 2017 and by a country mile.

I don't think people would still doubt him after that. I know I wouldn't.

Well, Barcelona did drop points, Deportivo and Malaga spring to mind but they actually have not lost to any of the top 8 La Liga teams. The difference is that we actually remained consistent in the 2nd half of the season and had a good start (the much underrated unbeaten run had something to do with that).

Barcelona got enough points to win La Liga, we actually managed to be just as consistent. Finally.

Mr Nick09 wrote:Carlo did not have Casemiro, Casemiro is single handily the most important player in this team. this squad is better, the subs are better.

on the other hand, Carlo had better versions of Ronaldo and Benzema.

farfan wrote:

Mr Nick09 wrote:Carlo did not have Casemiro, Casemiro is single handily the most important player in this team. this squad is better, the subs are better.

on the other hand, Carlo had better versions of Ronaldo and Benzema.

and that fantastic isco-kroos-modric-james midfield. I still mantain that Carlo's winning streak team was the best Madrid in the last years.

when del bosque was here, he was never viewed as "best madrid manager", he only started getting the love thanks to hindsight. it wasn't until like two years after he left that people started writing articles and clamoring for him. the same people who praised him, where the same people who praised perez for the beckham and queiroz coup

i'm still not a believer in "best manager" debates. there's a lot more to it than titles, hipster tactics, and the lot, especially in football. sometimes we down play one thing to praise the other- we'll downplay man managing, which is as much as part of coaching, to praise hipster tactics (one of these days i'll write a long post on my dislike for hipster tactics) or vice versa

zidane had a good squad with many problems with it at his disposal. he used the depth to counter the problems we had. and i am happy about that. the best coach at madrid won't be in comparison to del bosque or any other previous coaches

the best coach at madrid will be the one who can stay at this club for many many years without being fired or running for sabbatical. because that would imply they found enough success to survive the politics and issues at madrid.

Being a great manager has little to do with surviving Real Madrid's firing tbh. We don't hire or fire managers based on general logic.

In general, as soon as we have a trophyless season, the manager is gone regardless of his greatness. So the first season ZZ can't win a trophy, he will be packing his bags.

At least it's a step up from a manager not being sexy enough despite winning trophies lol.

The Demon of Carthage wrote:If he wins the CL, I'll take back everything I have ever said about him.

If he doesn't, I'll be extremely disappointed. Let's face it, we have won La Liga mostly because we were the best team (I agree), but also partly because Barcelona threw away an unprecedented number of points which made our campaign way easier.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking anything away from Z's Madrid, but if you want people to stop doubting him, he has to win the CL this year.

Winning it would make him one of the best managers in the world and would earn him the respect of everybody, including his most ruthless doubters and critics.

The doubters and critics are justified. I don't like to be pessimistic, but only someone with great bias would've thought, 2-3 months into the season, that we'd be challenging for both league and CL titles, let alone possibly winning them both. We've been so close to being knocked out of both competitions, on so many occasions, that I'm still struggling to believe that things are looking so overwhelmingly positive right now.

I can count a double digit number of games in the league, where if it wasn't for a string of incredibly unconvincing wins and draws adding up to a consistent streak without losses, we'd be in a completely different spot at this stage of the competition. Luck is naturally part of the game, but there's no way in hell that anyone could have predicted that our ridiculous luck would ultimately compensate for our sub-par start to the season, and then some.

One thing I'm really happy about, is that our second-string players have stepped up to the task and ensured that our starters are not fatigued during the conclusive chapter of what could go down as an historic season for the club. Zidane deserves a lot of praise for that. Not just any coach would put so much trust in the team members that are typically referred to as "fringe players".

And that's why we haven't won the league for so long...  our managers were worried about style points early in the season as opposed to building up the team for the "money" stage in the last months.

If ZZ was after how sexy we looked and style, he would have played our best 11 as often as he could from the first month forward.  Instead, he managed our squad to give us the best chance to win trophies when it counts.  

If our core players were all in their mid 20s, I would suspect that we would face less rotation too.  But with injuries and age, this type of extreme planning became necessary. I don't think ZZ wanted to use his squad as much as he was pushed to.

It's not about bias.  It's about admiring someone who looks farther the 1 centimeter in front of his nose.

sportsczy wrote:Being a great manager has little to do with surviving Real Madrid's firing tbh.  We don't hire or fire managers based on general logic.

In general, as soon as we have a trophyless season, the manager is gone regardless of his greatness.  So the first season ZZ can't win a trophy, he will be packing his bags.

At least it's a step up from a manager not being sexy enough despite winning trophies lol.

if you do well, chances are u won't get fired. surviving many years at madrid in all likelihood means you've been winning important titles and performing cos we won't keep anyone who goes empty handed

Even if you do well Tito, it might not be enough... you have to do well and the club needs to feel that its sexy lol. We will take you for granted in a heartbeat if we feel unsexy.

I hope he stays as long as possible, the player respects him, that's the most important thing in this Madrid, he will learn the tactical stuff with time, let's see if he has a saying in who goes and who stays