La Liga Matchday 12 | Sevilla vs Real Madrid

Real Madrid: Thibaut Courtois; Lucas Vazquez, Raphael Varane, Nacho, Ferland Mendy; Luka Modric, Casemiro, Toni Kroos; Rodrygo, Karim Benzema, Vincius.
Sevilla: Bono; Jesus Navas, Jules Kounde, Diego Carlos, Karim Rekik; Joan Jordan, Fernando, Ivan Rakitic; Lucas Ocampos, Luuk de Jong, Munir El Haddadi.

I wish Vini could just improve his decision making. It's like his switches off his brain when he's about to make the final pass and ends up squandering the attack.

So far the only threat we seem to have is through Kroos who, unlike the others, dares to shoot from outside the box.

Sevilla is not playing well either by the way.

Another painful first half performance.

We have a huge hole in the midfield because we need to play a low block.. so our midfield can’t cover that hole and we need to play a low block because our midfield has zero athleticism.

And sorry DoC but Kroos has been shocking, not made one good defensive challenge, out of position defensively and is completely anonymous off the ball. We have a huge, huge gap and hole between the midfield and the attack and Casemiro and especially modric are hustling defensively. You would think this gives Kroos the reins to be the catalyst offensively.. he hasn’t been, one okay shot doesn’t excuse his performance. His athleticism is so poor

While I stand by my statement that this team is being poorly coached, Zidane should have cut ties with the old guard from the moment he came back which he has the political clout to do anyway.

For the very least, some energy in the midfield would have (probably) mask any coaching or tactical deficiencies.

I agree. If you didn't catch the first half, you didn't miss anything worthy of the name really.

I agree that Kroos has been subpar, but I was only talking about the fact that he was the only player who dares to shoot from outside the box. When you can't unlock defenses or even step into their box, the next wise thing to do is to shoot. This is why I don't understand why our strikers don't do that often.

Anyway, all in all we came close to scoring on a couple occasions. One was through Kroos from a shot from outside the box and the second was from Benzema who was denied by a great save from Sevilla's goalie.

All in all, it was a very disappointing half, unsurprisingly.

At least we’re playing good defense though.. that’s one plus.

You know what, credit to Zidane for playing the low block I’ve been crying about and going a step further and playing mourinho ball. It’s ugly but it will do the job. We’ll win games. Just not pretty to watch

We have to go full Mourinho. We have no other option this season with our squad.

halamadrid2 wrote:This win reminds me of the way we used to win after the covid break. Defend and get the odd goal

I don't think we can do anything else given what we have up front.

Modric does not look like 35 to me.

His biological age must be closer to 29-30. When he is motivated he is physically as fit as any midfielder we have. How ever the concentration level has gone way down just like every body else.