El Senior - Xabi Alonso

i dont think ronaldo have a bad ratio on his free kick imo.

Cristiano has more chance of scoring from a direct free kick than Alonso and Ozil does honestly...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8dND6c5gyM&feature=related

This performance should demolish any opinions of Alonso being dropped from Spain XI.

i want this man to retire in madrid.

dont go back to liverpool mate

Xabi our true midfield general our game suffers so much without him

Shaven rename the thread: The general and mastermind

agree with xabi should take more free kicks, he only taken like one or two last season iiirc

Both Alonso and Ronaldo should take turns.

a bit late now, Sahin is a true master.

Sahin is better than both, except when we want to take a far out direct FK

Yuri, nick, Sahin has to play first

Just saying hes better, not that he will take them.

Ronaldo is better at 25 + yards. Sahin will bend them from close range.

Sahin for free kicks from the right side and Alonso from the left?

Yeh probably.

Ozil for corners

Yuri Yukuv wrote:

omarish wrote:

Yuri Yukuv wrote:Oh yeah the most unpopular opinion I have

The reason why real madrid has been losing to barca is because of alonso, not ronaldos selfishness, not an imbalanced team, not bad defence, not khedira.

Not questioning you but I actually wanna know how he could be such a big reason lol... he wasnt really that bad

Id rather not come and go on this thread, we can talk about it in the xabi thread real madrid section.


Actualy I believe the over reliance on xabi has seen our elimination in every single tournament weve lost since he came.

Explain it, I'm curious.

Ok the problem with xabi is that he cannot play make under pressure, against barca he faces an incredible amount of pressure that neutralizes him. We play like 10 men, except worse as many of his plays are rushed and result in misplaced passes which come back to us.

Since the beginning of perez era II our performance against barca has been negatively correlated with how much we rely on xabi. In the first classico of 2009/2010 we didnt rely on him much and we did great, the next clasico we relied on him more and we lost by 2 goals, during the 5-0 it was the game where we built ourselves around xabi the most and we failed miserably, the next game xabi wasnt integral in our plan and he was subbed out a few second after that we scored, in the CDR we didnt rely on xabi much we changed his role and it worked great but he was only 0.3 of what he usually is so we were playng with 10.3 players, over CL first round he was exposed his two protecters (Khedira & Pepe) werent there and we lost by two goals while in the last game we scored a goal through di maria intercepting barcas defense passing.

Our over reliance on him is a weakness that we have, we got eliminated in the CDR last year partly because he wasnt playing and Alcorcon pressured with 11 angry men against the lone hungover playmaker guti, during the lyon game we didnt go through because he wasnt there and we couldnt replace him, in this year la liga xabi couldnt take playing against tough teams consecutivly in the CDR and la liga and we lost points.

Xabi is not a player that we can place that much responsibility on, hell, there arent much players over history that could take that responsibility some of them are redondo and zidane. He is not cut off their cloth though.

I dunno, he has been a boss in the midfield but anyways, the El Clasico argument - Are people considiring in the El Clasicos Xabi didn't get as much ball and momentum to play like he wants? Our team had 30% possesion, it's very hard to not play overdefensive and not playmake during it.

But anyways, I agree, we can't rely on him so much, it can be bad.

If Xabi could retain the ball the way Xavi does, our possession will be 35+%.

If Xabi was better at holding the ball, it would make a case for Ozil to be a sure starter, and our possession would be a lot more decent, 40+%

I think people saying xabi isint good in El Clasicos is because they expect from him too much..
Midfield containing 3 men or 1 dm and 2 Cms is enough to play with barcelona.

Wow Xabis main weakness is inability to playmake under pressure, its not just clasicos, he always struggles then but no one exposes it like barcelona.

The xcx wrote:I think people saying xabi isint good in El Clasicos is because they expect from him too much..
Midfield containing 3 men or 1 dm and 2 Cms is enough to play with barcelona.

no it's because he is the playmaker, yet he struggles to get a hold of the ball and pace the game.

Barcelona completely suffocates him when he touches it.

I don't think it is necessarily true that Alonso can't hold the ball under pressure - granted, he isn't the fastest, so that at times makes it hard.

I think what went wrong during the Classicos is not necessarily overreliance on Alonso, but in creating opportunity. The key skill of Barcelona, imo, is ALWAYS creating opportunity to pass the ball to. Always make sure there are at least 2 players free to give an easy pass to (triangles etc.).

One of Alonso's main purposes, is that he can create play even without those opportunities and bypass structured pass buildup. However, he needs space for that (which is what he had more of in the EPL, which is why he played a very game there) , and Barcelona has deducted well that eliminating Alonso (by taking away virtually all opportunities for him to pass to) will completely ruin Madrid's game, because no link up remains. He had no one to pass to, so he ultimately often lost the ball when he had it.

Indeed as such, it was overreliance on Alonso that ruined our game, but Alonso together with Sahin next year and more simple link-up passing I have been rooting for for months by all players (most fail completely at even giving a simple pass in all games) we can utilize our attack more against Barca and win.

who is the girl beside xabi