UCL SF 2020/21 | Real Madrid Vs Chelsea

Katy Perry wrote:Hazard didn't play well but it's ridiculous how much he's being made the scapegoat. He was playing with his back on goal for the majority of the game (definitely how you should use him), and every time he was facing towards the goal he was getting double teammated and heckled by two of azpi christensen and kante with no teammates in sight to offer some relief. Mendy no where to be seen. Kroos and Modric just trotting around the midfield. Casemiro was the midfielder who attempted the most runs forward and tried to progress with the ball the most   Benzema scored a jammy goal with the ball ricocheting 40 times off a set piece, had a couple long shots that looked threatening and that's it in 180 minutes. Zidane played with 3ATB and yet real's defence was getting carved left and right. But all I hear about is Hazard this Hazard that.

A fair aggregate of this tie would have been Real Madrid losing by 7-8 goals. Nobody could have said that it would have been undeserved or that it would have flattered Chelsea. Surely you can pin that down to 1 player who didn't even start the first leg

Completely disagree but I’ll break it down as to why.

1. Hazard played his back to goal everytime he received the ball because his off the ball movement was extremely poor. This comes from not being fit. It’s that simple. Messi is the greatest of all time and he beats two players everytime he gets the ball, yet he’s static and he gets shit on by Barca fans. What makes you think a past it hazard can have the same luxury?

2. We played with 3 ATB due to injuries and the fact that we needed to play defensively. It would’ve been even worse with 4 ATB. That being said the defense shit the bed and not enough attention is being put on Ramos ‘s disaster class. He completely unbalanced the defense. He played on name only and if it were up to me he’d ride the bench until he sorted his contract out. And hazard also played on name only, he can’t even do anything against village teams in la liga.

3. Casemiro is one of our top goal scorers. He actually makes forward runs effectively. In the youth teams as a teenager he played as a striker and for good reason. He is the only one who can finish on the team besides benzema.

4. It’s outrageous to blame our best player this season. Benzema was the one double teamed, and fat Hazard walking his ass around just gave Benzema even less space to work with. Even vini and asensio would at least make runs and play defense. Hazard did neither, he walked around, got the ball, passed it back after making a shit turn. Benzema is a RM legend and he has saved our asses almost every game. Your fanboyism is evident. Here’s the thing. The old Chelsea hazard is gone. He’s never coming back. It’s time to wave the white flag for hazard. He’s going to be sold to some mid table team and that’ll be the end of the nightmare.

Guy who costs 100m shows up unfit, fat and completely disinterested, puts up a historically awful performance and somehow none of it is his blame! Sure. Less end product than Favela boy Vinicius. Its not a one-off, its a pattern of his performances. Benzema had literally zero support from this pleb.

The Franchise wrote:

Katy Perry wrote:Hazard didn't play well but it's ridiculous how much he's being made the scapegoat. He was playing with his back on goal for the majority of the game (definitely how you should use him), and every time he was facing towards the goal he was getting double teammated and heckled by two of azpi christensen and kante with no teammates in sight to offer some relief. Mendy no where to be seen. Kroos and Modric just trotting around the midfield. Casemiro was the midfielder who attempted the most runs forward and tried to progress with the ball the most   Benzema scored a jammy goal with the ball ricocheting 40 times off a set piece, had a couple long shots that looked threatening and that's it in 180 minutes. Zidane played with 3ATB and yet real's defence was getting carved left and right. But all I hear about is Hazard this Hazard that.

A fair aggregate of this tie would have been Real Madrid losing by 7-8 goals. Nobody could have said that it would have been undeserved or that it would have flattered Chelsea. Surely you can pin that down to 1 player who didn't even start the first leg

That is mostly true, but with Hazard in there it threw off so much of what Madrid are strong at.

In previous games, Madrid have done well in my opinion because they have players in Modric and Kroos who can find Benzema's feet consistently. He can drop in deep and consistently get on the ball and move it wide, or back to a 3rd player who can play wide or behind. But this works well when you have Valverde or Vini who offer those runs behind. This is when Benz becomes a nightmare to defend against because its so unclear if you should commit to pressing him with your defence and risk the pass behind or let him dictate the game and set up transition attacks anyway.

But with Hazard playing this strange 10 role, it made Benz ineffective and without Valverde and with Vini deeper to accommodate Hazard there was not threat of getting behind the defence. The entire set up lead to Madrid playing passes to the feet the entire game and never into dangerous areas.

Hm. I didn't see it as Zidane shoehorning the way Real plays just to fit Hazard. He played the same exact 3-5-2 in the first leg when Hazard was on the bench and it was pretty much the same lack of movement and lack of runners. The same uninspiring and unassertive choice of passing in Chelsea's half. Vinicius still struggled out of role as the the other striker next to Benzema.

If Zizou's takeaway from the first leg was that he absolutely needed Hazard back in even if not fully fit, why not just play him as a winger
in the 4-3-3 that got them here? Or if he really felt that insecure about the matchup to the point where he's mirroring Chelsea's tactics
why not mirror them all the way and play a 3-4-2-1 so that Hazard could play the role where he excelled with Conte and in the WC run with Belgium? Hazard was the one being shoehorned if anything.

FennecFox7 wrote:

Katy Perry wrote:Hazard didn't play well but it's ridiculous how much he's being made the scapegoat. He was playing with his back on goal for the majority of the game (definitely how you should use him), and every time he was facing towards the goal he was getting double teammated and heckled by two of azpi christensen and kante with no teammates in sight to offer some relief. Mendy no where to be seen. Kroos and Modric just trotting around the midfield. Casemiro was the midfielder who attempted the most runs forward and tried to progress with the ball the most   Benzema scored a jammy goal with the ball ricocheting 40 times off a set piece, had a couple long shots that looked threatening and that's it in 180 minutes. Zidane played with 3ATB and yet real's defence was getting carved left and right. But all I hear about is Hazard this Hazard that.

A fair aggregate of this tie would have been Real Madrid losing by 7-8 goals. Nobody could have said that it would have been undeserved or that it would have flattered Chelsea. Surely you can pin that down to 1 player who didn't even start the first leg

Completely disagree but I’ll break it down as to why.

1. Hazard played his back to goal everytime he received the ball because his off the ball movement was extremely poor. This comes from not being fit. It’s that simple. Messi is the greatest of all time and he beats two players everytime he gets the ball, yet he’s static and he gets shit on by Barca fans. What makes you think a past it hazard can have the same luxury?

2. We played with 3 ATB due to injuries and the fact that we needed to play defensively. It would’ve been even worse with 4 ATB. That being said the defense shit the bed and not enough attention is being put on Ramos ‘s disaster class. He completely unbalanced the defense. He played on name only and if it were up to me he’d ride the bench until he sorted his contract out. And hazard also played on name only, he can’t even do anything against village teams in la liga.

3. Casemiro is one of our top goal scorers. He actually makes forward runs effectively. In the youth teams as a teenager he played as a striker and for good reason. He is the only one who can finish on the team besides benzema.

4. It’s outrageous to blame our best player this season. Benzema was the one double teamed, and fat Hazard walking his ass around just gave Benzema even less space to work with. Even vini and asensio would at least make runs and play defense. Hazard did neither, he walked around, got the ball, passed it back after making a shit turn. Benzema is a RM legend and he has saved our asses almost every game.

1. Hazard played with his back of the goal so much because he was played as a striker. Benzema did too but at least he's an experienced striker and knew how to deal with it (like when he skinned Thiago). And Real's whole team off the ball movement was non existent. The only guy who wasn't static and actually caused problems to Chelsea was Vinicius and he got subbed off because he's not a wingback and he wasn't tracking Chillwell all the way  

2. Exactly, not enough attention is being put to how much Real was exposed at the back, not enough attention is being brought to Zidane's defeatist mentality that made him shake up his standard formation so much, and made Real play something they were uncomfortable with just to try to limit Chelsea who was considered the underdogs by almost everybody.

3. Fair enough. I'm not that familiar with how Real plays. It did seem that he was getting forward by design rather than like winning the ball high up the pitch and keeping with the momentum of the play or something random like that.

4. Benzema got double teamed, yes, but Hazard also got double teamed on sight. That's just Chelsea being a way more oiled machine and accustomed at this setup than Real's improvised mirror formation, and that's also on Real's other players not making Chelsea pay for it. You can't double any of Chelsea's attacking players without putting yourself at a disadvantage for example. But my point was that everyone, including your club legend player of the season, was underwhelming and was setup to fail from the start. The correct scoreline would have been 8-0. That's my takeaway from the game. Real Madrid getting systematically outplayed from head to toe. Certainly not singling out anyone in particular when everyone was so disappointing and the gap should have been by 8 goals.

FennecFox7 wrote: Your fanboyism is evident. Here’s the thing. The old Chelsea hazard is gone. He’s never coming back. It’s time to wave the white flag for hazard. He’s going to be sold to some mid table team and that’ll be the end of the nightmare.

I'm sure Chelsea would take him on a Bale/Sanchez type of loan where Real actually pays them just to get rid of him where he begins as a supersub and is slowly integrated into the first XI as he regains his fitness. And they're a top 2 team in Europe

good to have you back Katy Perry
unfortunately i have to agree with FFox here, the forever overhyped and overrated Hazard's days are over

My biggest issue is I harped on Hazard but I could for most Madrid players. I just chose hazard because he's the only Madrid player who I forgot was actually playing in the game I was watching. That's not even a "hazard ghost" joke.

The other thing is how much he costs. And who here even likes Hazard?

Dude is a fat lazy pleb who cost 100 million and literally took the game off and had a laugh with his Chelsea mates after the game. I can criticize him if I want.

But yeah most of the Madrid team was shit, too.

El Gunner wrote:good to have you back Katy Perry
unfortunately i have to agree with FFox here, the forever overhyped and overrated Hazard's days are over

I'm aware that's a possibility. I would still like to see him in a less toxic environment, with a proper medical staff, where he's not required to fill CR7's boots but just be the baller that he's always being before labelling him as washed up.

CBarca wrote:My biggest issue is I harped on Hazard but I could for most Madrid players. I just chose hazard because he's the only Madrid player who I forgot was actually playing in the game I was watching. That's not even a "hazard ghost" joke.

The other thing is how much he costs. And who here even likes Hazard?

Dude is a fat lazy pleb who cost 100 million and literally took the game off and had a laugh with his Chelsea mates after the game. I can criticize him if I want.

But yeah most of the Madrid team was shit, too.

What can I say man, Zouma is one goofy dude. He could probably make me laugh at my grandma's funeral. I'm not a bad person for laughing at my nonna's expense, I just have human emotions and thus can't resist Chelsea's big teddy bear.

Zidanes defeatist mentality? You mean the guy who’s won more CL’s then your whole team??

Imagine saying that and making up all these excuses for defending hazard. He’s been like this for TWO YEARS. He’s played on the wing, striker, in the whole, it doesn’t matter he is shit.

I mentioned our team is gassed and we don’t have proper depth this season. Hazard is part of that depth. And he was dog shit. And he was 100 million

You can win multiple CLs and have a defeatist mentality in a CL tie 3 years later. They're not mutually exclusive.
He switched to this 3-5-2 that Real was blatantly not comfortable with, making everyone play out of their element, and it's not like Real got spanked playing their usual formation in the first leg or the first half of the first leg that forced his hand. It's like he resigned himself to the fact that they were for sure gonna lose playing their A game before the game even started and gambled on what he perceived as the second worst option.

Granted, Real's players are world class and they should be able to adapt on the fly and work their way through tactical mismatches, but to me it seemed like they were given an insurmountable task and were doomed to come short. That explains why everyone was so underwhelming and why the drop off between Real's level against Atalanta and Liverpool and its level against Chelsea in both legs was so significant.

We’ve played three at the back multiple times this season and it worked great. That was not the issue. Actually, our 4-3-3 is stale against big teams without valverde. Our players don’t have the athleticism to cover that ground.

Our players WERE world class. Most of them are past it. Zidane is squeezing the drops out of the squad. He’s overachieving big time. The biggest mistakes were playing Ramos and hazard. That’s what killed us. He played the players on their name and not merit. He got us to the semis which is shocking and that deserves respect. And if we win today we get pretty close to sealing la liga

Anyways, the question was hazard shit. The answer is yes. Has he done enough to justify his price tag. The answer is no. So there’s pretty much no way you’re right. He played in a 2 striker formation with both him and Benzema having license to dezone.. your “striker” description is misleading

Well I don't know exactly how many times Real played in that system. But the contrast between the two teams players' automatisms was huge. How players were shifting, the distance between the players, how the space was being attacked, etc. It was evident that Real wasn't comfortable at all playing in that formation. I'm sure that if Chelsea plays someone accomplished at the 352 like Inter the games would be two stalemates and not as one-sided as this one.

I'm not sure what's the point of scapegoating two players who didn't play in the first leg when Real played the same exact way? Lucky to not be 0-3 down, zero urgency, defense leaking, passengers in midfield, non-existent attack. Even when Chelsea went ahead Real seemed perfectly fine to be losing at home as they kept getting rolled over and only scored through that jammy fifa goal on a set piece.
And you seem to be unaware that multiple things can be true at the same time. Zidane can win multiple CLs and lead Real to a la liga title challenge but Zidane can also bottle a CL tie. They don't necessarily disprove each other  

Nope. The question was is Hazard being scapegoated for a tie where everyone was so poor and the gap between the two teams should have been 8 goals?
And it's not as simple as "play striker and just roam around" is it? His starting position, his movement, what's required of him, how his teammates play around him, his area of effectiveness etc changes when he's switched from winger to striker. Which doesn't absolve him from all the blame, but the blame should be equally spread and not concentrated on one single scapegoat (or two).