Girona vs Real Madrid

No he was truly excellent.  Great game by Benzema, which is the reason he was subbed off and got so many applause.  Played as a 10 today and did it well.  Our play was very beautiful overall.

Our set piece defending is abysmal however.  Mainly because, other than our CBs, nobody knows how to defend those.

That's the black eye on an otherwise very good performance imo.

Bale is dumb as rocks

@Doc... that's why we can't play without Casemiro against big teams. Varane was literally the only one who was a good set piece defender today. Everyone else just can't do it. It's not like they have the ability.

Even when Ramos comes back, 2 is not enough. We need a midfield that can help there. Kroos is absolutely useless at it. Modric is too much of a midget. Kova doesn't really do much for us there either.

Our fullbacks are awful at set piece defending. Really poor. Puts a lot more pressure on midfielders to compensate there.

Granted, it's not like Barca are anymore talented at it than we are. But at least Busquets and Rakitic participate with helping.

Varane and Nacho did their job very well. Cavajal was the main culprit. Granted, he shouldn't be the one marking that guy. But who else do we have? Varane and Nacho have to take the tallest guys. That leaves who exactly to cover the other threats?

He didn't stand a chance so I'm not even that mad at Carvajal.  This is where Kova needs to make big strides.  If he wants to start, he needs to make himself a defensive asset on set pieces.

The other option is to play zonal marking... but I'm not really sure we have enough brain cells on our team to pull that off lol.

Could you imagine Ramos and Marcelo trying to think their way in a zonal marking setup

halamadrid2 wrote:What a game by Kroos. He was unplayable, they wouldn't even go near him because he can always find his man. Motm for me tbh. Benz played quite good too but Ronaldo mama mia it's impossible to mark him.

On a night like this, the defending left alot to be desired. I don't know if Marcelo was playing injured because he looksd very subdued. Both Varane and Nacho we terribly weak against their attacker but my oh my the set pieces on two of the goals their goalscorer was literally unmarked, where the f were the players marking them (Carvajal?). The last goal lol only Ronaldo jumped, the rest stood and watched the ball as it flew over their heads and Carvajal let his shoulder be a cushion for their scorer. Unbelievable how bad the set piece defending was

And the ref maybe he should've refereed the local derby where Atleti were allowed to kick our players to kingdom come, he acted like their freaking body guard, so frustrating having a referee like that

you can't give Kroos man of the match, when he is the single pivot and plays so poorly in defense, he doesnt cover anyone, and doesnt look to tackle anyone in space. his level on transition defense is -10.

On the ball he is superb, but outside of it, he is just walking.

ultimately we took 3 goals on freekicks were Carvajal failed at marking Stuani twice, and Nacho forgot his man.

it's la liga so they are not concentrated in defense.

ask your genius coach. if they decide the 1v1 marking responsibilities in the locker room, that's a problem. If the players are supposed to pick a player on the pitch as they see fit, then it translates a lack of defensive leadership when Ramos is absent. To make matter worse, Carvajal got beaten twice, and never thought he should not be marking him again after the first goal, lack of intelligence all together.

this is just negligent and shows they do not care as much as we think they should in these la liga games.

Of course when we play Juventus, everyone will be extra smart

The CBs had to take on the opposition CBs...  they're actually taller and stronger than Stuani.  It's more about who the heck was going to take the 3rd biggest player, Stuani.  Likely felt that Carvajal would actually fight the hardest for position.

Girona is a top 2 team in terms of scoring from set pieces in La Liga (I think we're tops).  So it's not like we didn't know this was going to be a problem.

I was equally annoyed with unnecessary fouls and stupid corners (looking at you Marcelo and Carvajal) that gave them so many unforced chances on the set piece.

that's why we need a defensive leader out there, those were very tame set pieces to concede from. a defensive leader and the goalkeeper are responsible for ensuring everyone has their man; a setpiece from a corner or a cross free kick isn't a super fast process, there's ample time for a goalie and defensive leader to get their bearings; that carvajal was the one on stuani is extremely ridiculous

if ramos was there it might not have helped either cos we've seen ramos perform school boy errors on setpieces and crosses like against eibar. it was painfully obvious that neither the defense nor goalie knew what they were doing, it was just everybody yelling at each other to focus. you only need maximum 2 voices, the goalie and a defender who can organize everyone's position on setpieces

what infuriated me the most was stuani was subbed out, and on the next set piece i said to myself that since he was subbed out there should be no problem......wrong. its almost as if our setpiece defending is done not to block the goalie's view, than to actually defend the bloody cross coming in