Spanish super cup: Real Madrid vs FC Barcelona; 1st leg

Yeah... Thiago plays much, much further up than Xavi. He's not a facilitating mid. He's a final 1/3 type player.

-----------------------Casillas
------Arbeloa----Pepe-----Carvalho----Marcelo
---------------------Coentrao----------------
---------------Khedira-------------Alonso----
-------Özil--------------Benzema--------CR7

Thiago is the more direct version of Iniesta if anything

I don't understand why anyone would have Ozil in their midfield 3, or no Di Maria in their lineup.

Not going to happen, not even a sliver of a chance

Omniscient wrote:I don't understand why anyone would have Ozil in their midfield 3, or no Di Maria in their lineup.

Not going to happen, not even a sliver of a chance

You have a wager dude. There's no chance Ozil doesn't start... none at all. We don't need wingers to help the midfield. We need midfielders who can hold and pass the ball. Coentrao offers good defense and winger skills in the mid. I can only see Di Maria getting to start over Coentrao, not Ozil.

sportsczy wrote:

Omniscient wrote:I don't understand why anyone would have Ozil in their midfield 3, or no Di Maria in their lineup.

Not going to happen, not even a sliver of a chance

You have a wager dude. There's no chance Ozil doesn't start... none at all. We don't need wingers to help the midfield. We need midfielders who can hold and pass the ball. Coentrao offers good defense and winger skills in the mid. I can only see Di Maria getting to start over Coentrao, not Ozil.

Imagine a first half like in CDR final where CR7 actually scores the given chances

babun1024 wrote:

sportsczy wrote:

Omniscient wrote:I don't understand why anyone would have Ozil in their midfield 3, or no Di Maria in their lineup.

Not going to happen, not even a sliver of a chance

You have a wager dude. There's no chance Ozil doesn't start... none at all. We don't need wingers to help the midfield. We need midfielders who can hold and pass the ball. Coentrao offers good defense and winger skills in the mid. I can only see Di Maria getting to start over Coentrao, not Ozil.

Imagine a first half like in CDR final where CR7 actually scores the given chances

We got lucky in CDR too. Remember that Villa and Pedro were not in good form then... missed plenty too. Sanchez and a better Villa will be much tougher.

The thing we have going for us is that we tool the preseason much more seriously than Barca and Xavi + Puyol will be missing. We should have a physical edge.

sportsczy wrote:

babun1024 wrote:

sportsczy wrote:

Omniscient wrote:I don't understand why anyone would have Ozil in their midfield 3, or no Di Maria in their lineup.

Not going to happen, not even a sliver of a chance

You have a wager dude. There's no chance Ozil doesn't start... none at all. We don't need wingers to help the midfield. We need midfielders who can hold and pass the ball. Coentrao offers good defense and winger skills in the mid. I can only see Di Maria getting to start over Coentrao, not Ozil.

Imagine a first half like in CDR final where CR7 actually scores the given chances

We got lucky in CDR too. Remember that Villa and Pedro were not in good form then... missed plenty too. Sanchez and a better Villa will be much tougher.

The thing we have going for us is that we tool the preseason much more seriously than Barca and Xavi + Puyol will be missing. We should have a physical edge.

Sanchez will trouble more but he isn't more of a finisher like Messi or Pedro. Also, his off ball movement isn' as good as theirs but if he drops into midfield, there's no way we could gain any little possession without risks

Barca basically crowds the midfield. We just need to have enough bodies there too. We don't match up very well as their biggest strength is our biggest weakness.

sportsczy wrote:Barca basically crowds the midfield. We just need to have enough bodies there too. We don't match up very well as their biggest strength is our biggest weakness.

I trust in Mou. He'll think of something with Sahin and Coentrao

Athletic CBs that can come up higher and help is a must. We already have CR7 and Benz that can do that as forwards... that's why i want a Pepe/Varane CB pairing. Albiol/Carvalho or Varane/Carvalho is not good enough imo. Albiol/Carvalho is suicide and i don't like the Carvalho/Marcelo pairing on the left.

sportsczy wrote:Athletic CBs that can come up higher and help is a must. We already have CR7 and Benz that can do that as forwards... that's why i want a Pepe/Varane CB pairing. Albiol/Carvalho or Varane/Carvalho is not good enough imo. Albiol/Carvalho is suicide and i don't like the Carvalho/Marcelo pairing on the left.

No Carvalho in the middle and no Ramos on the right= my dream defense

I am finally back from holiday and that news about Sahin sucks really bad.

Can't Wait

I don't get why some fans don't want Pepe in midfield and Di Maria to start, the two together with Ronaldo were the best three players in the last four clasicos for Real Madrid.

I've no doubt Mourinho will start Pepe in midfield, Coentrao until he came to Madrid had not played in defensive midfield and it'll be a big risk to put him in the match when against a midfield like that of Barcelona's.

Pepe's role will not be to create play but to make sure Xavi and Messi don't get enough free room to operate in midfield. At the moment he is the best player in Madrid for that job. Barcelona recognized the threat posed by Pepe and tried to get him off as early as possible.

In the 4-3-3 formation, Khedira and Alonso will be in charge of creating from midfield and Pepe will be restricted to making simple passes to the more creative players after he has regained possession for the team.

buddytaller wrote:I don't get why some fans don't want Pepe in midfield and Di Maria to start, the two together with Ronaldo were the best three players in the last four clasicos for Real Madrid.

I've no doubt Mourinho will start Pepe in midfield, Coentrao until he came to Madrid had not played in defensive midfield and it'll be a big risk to put him in the match when against a midfield like that of Barcelona's.

Pepe's role will not be to create play but to make sure Xavi and Messi don't get enough free room to operate in midfield. At the moment he is the best player in Madrid for that job. Barcelona recognized the threat posed by Pepe and tried to get him off as early as possible.

In the 4-3-3 formation, Khedira and Alonso will be in charge of creating from midfield and Pepe will be restricted to making simple passes to the more creative players after he has regained possession for the team.

this. i completly agree, we use pepe as a ball winning midfielder. its the most effective way. people are forgetting that in the 1-1 in camp nou we created less chances than the other clasicos. we were lucky to score (thanks to di maria, again)

I wish it were that simple.... But you have all three forwards and three midfielders pressing the midfield. With pepe in there, he's dead with the ball. Di Maria squandered so many clear simple passes that I stopped counting. Cr7 too. Problem with both cr7 and di Maria was that they kept trying to dribble out of the pressing as opposed to pass.

If we want to gamble that Barca will keep missing and we'll just park the bus for 60-65 mins... Sure. Play pepe in the mid and di Maria instead of ozil. We will deserve all the anti-football criticism that comes our way.

I'm hoping we get a bit more ambitious.

Btw, we were very, very lucky that villa and Pedro were in such bad form in the CDR. Cr7 missed a ton of chances and di Maria saved an otherwise meh game from him with that cross in overtime.

sportsczy wrote:I wish it were that simple.... But you have all three forwards and three midfielders pressing the midfield. With pepe in there, he's dead with the ball. Di Maria squandered so many clear simple passes that I stopped counting. Cr7 too. Problem with both cr7 and di Maria was that they kept trying to dribble out of the pressing as opposed to pass.

If we want to gamble that Barca will keep missing and we'll just park the bus for 60-65 mins... Sure. Play pepe in the mid and di Maria instead of ozil. We will deserve all the anti-football criticism that comes our way.

I'm hoping we get a bit more ambitious.

Btw, we were very, very lucky that villa and Pedro were in such bad form in the CDR. Cr7 missed a ton of chances and di Maria saved an otherwise meh game from him with that cross in overtime.

Cr7 missed 2 or 3 times

Real Madrid was not "lucky" in any of the four clasicos, we created just as many chances as Barcelona did with very little possession. Again, Barcelona prevented Madrid from playing their game by pressing and fouling any time Real tried to counter attack them, Real prevented them from playing their game by packing the midfield and playing through the wings, I don't see the antifootball in that. Barcelona fouling to stop our counterattack can be seen in this video.


Alonso is probably the best passer of the ball in Madrid, but was not able to influence the game like Di Maria did. For all his flaws Di Maria is perfect for a match like this, his ability to run for 120 minutes and give match winning crosses, makes him a very safe bet.

buddytaller wrote:I don't get why some fans don't want Pepe in midfield and Di Maria to start, the two together with Ronaldo were the best three players in the last four clasicos for Real Madrid.

I've no doubt Mourinho will start Pepe in midfield, Coentrao until he came to Madrid had not played in defensive midfield and it'll be a big risk to put him in the match when against a midfield like that of Barcelona's.

Pepe's role will not be to create play but to make sure Xavi and Messi don't get enough free room to operate in midfield. At the moment he is the best player in Madrid for that job. Barcelona recognized the threat posed by Pepe and tried to get him off as early as possible.

In the 4-3-3 formation, Khedira and Alonso will be in charge of creating from midfield and Pepe will be restricted to making simple passes to the more creative players after he has regained possession for the team.

But would be also a good chance to train Conterao on playing the defensive role against Barca, so he can what it feels like when we face Barca in an important match.

are ppl forgetting we still had the better chances in cdr? AND that we dominated 1st half?

Everyone says we parked the bus in the clasicos, I think what we did was close down the passing lanes and didn't go forward until we had the ball. Yes its boring but it really isn't anti-football, its the media/barca/xavi that's calling it that. They did the same exact thing, though instead of closing the passing lanes they kept possession and sat back [side passes and back passes] until one player from our team was out of position.

It isn't easy playing barca head to head especially with their way of keeping possession. We have two choices, one is to stick to the same tactics the team is used to or two field a team that can keep possession.

For option two we'll need a midfield that consists of Khedira - Xabi - Sahin with Ozil sitting in front of them. We'll also need to field benzema and let him be our SS. For our CF it'll be Ronaldo. For this formation we'll have to drop di maria since you need good passers nor dribblers. As for the defenders I say we should have Ramos as RB since his passing is pretty good. All the players in this formation can pass under pressure.

The team will look like this:


As you can see our team is missing some of those players, they also need to get used to playing like this. I'm hoping Mou fields this team for the clasico in december.

Now back onto the current clasico we'll have to field the "anti-football" team since the players are familiar with it. I just hope they don't waste the little possession we have by crazy dribbling or bad passes.

I would sacrifice Alonso

Reason Alonso was unable to do anything was because he was bracketed by Barca... easy to do when one of the mids (Pepe) is a non-factor offensively. Di Maria is NOT A MIDFIELDER... not even close.

The only times we started to look a little better offensively was when Ozil played and Khedira was available. Otherwise, we stunk it up when we had the ball for the most part.

If we play shit tactics in Madrid, i will be very, very disappointed. In Barcelona... that's at least a bit understandable, although i didn't get it since we were down 0-2 in the CL return leg. But without Khedira and Pepe, i guess Mou felt he had no choice in order for Madrid to keep face.

We played too much to not look bad if we lost as opposed to try and truly win in the CL tie imo.

best player in last clasicos was hands down dimaria, not only did he keep alves quite but whenever he run towards him, he almost ALWAYS was able to beat him, it was then when he faced puyol in the bow that he started shooting from acute angles

now with no alves(according to barca fans) and no puyol, dimaria will make that wing his own

a midfield with coentrao is better than that of pepe, pepe might have shown us that he can hadle barcas midfield on his own, but coentrao di exactly that AND he attacked when we had the ball as well, coming back to his original position to stop any balls from going through, it was great, now if he could do that in the super cup, ill be extrinsic, b/c then we can pair up pepe with varane in the heart of the defence

and to you(cant remember who it was sorry), who said that thiago will do a better job than xavi in the clasico, lol thiago will attack and forget that he has to press our players like a fly so that wll be one body less when we attack, he has never played against a big team either, i dont think pep will take any risks with that tbh

with no puyol in their defence busq/or march are gonna have to play there, which means a makeshift midfield, another plus to us

alexis sanchez and messi havent played yet and argentinas friendly was called off, so i dont know if messi will start and sanchez i dont even think will come off the bench, has he even started training with them???

we have to remember that villa and pedro are still not delivering so they are in the same state they were in at the end of the last season, ill give the benefit of the doubt b/c they havent played a full strength line-up yet

anyhow i think we will take this one, and then celebrate in their own stadium

I really enjoyed our 4 games against Barcelona, call it what ever u want, but I don't find losing 6-2 and 5-0 exciting at all. Alonso failed because he cannot dribble his way out when pressed, he works best when given a lot of space just like Xavi.

The difference between the two is that Xavi is capable of doing the tactical dribble to get out of trouble when pressed. When all fails, he can always tumble on the slightest of contacts and win a freekick for his team.