They’re an old team, coming off a 76 point season that just lost their best player. They obviously had the quality last season but maybe not the stamina to do it week in week out. Both Liverpool and Spurs pressed them off the park last year and if it weren’t for goalkeeper errors and Salah being injured it could have been quite different. And they edged past Bayern and Juve by slim margins. Barce and Atletico not putting it together is ironically keeping them in the title race
And really Real haven’t invested big in recent seasons either. They were bound to get old sooner or later.
Well rather they’re a saturated starting 11 that has won so much lately I don’t understand why they even get up in the morning anymore (Or how Zidane made them) and then they lost their main goal scorer, the best in the world, through whom all the finishing has been built for a decade.
Now their main striker and right winger are required to score and Benzema is a support striker more than anything else, their right wing used to only need to be drawing attention and Bale is now required to score and their defence, which is designed for gung-ho man vs man defending because Realball is designed to be attacking football, look a lot more shambolic when they’re not lethal on the counter but have to sit and defend as a unit, something they were always bad at by design. And they have obviously not refilled at all for years on top of that, because they’re redesigning the Bernabeu to look like a robot duster.
If you look at what’s standing behind the regular starting 11, Vazquez is like many of our own products, “promising” for so long they’re 28yo by now, Isco and Asensio sure are good but they’re not scoring 15 goals per season and Ceballos and Llorente are more or less not scoring at all and Vicinius is 18yo. So where they thought the goals would be coming from nobody knows. Surely they did not expect Bale and Benzema to cover up the 50goals/season that just left the building lol
They need to buy a whole new attacking trio and get an actual manager in, and possibly the best candidate to take over for Modric was Kovacic who they should’ve probably kept around it seems. Especially since Kroos is struggling as well.
It probably also has a psychological effect on the team and the opposition that CR7 isn’t there anymore. I actually thought Bale would be pushed into CR7s role. They must have thought Bale, Benz and Asenio would all increase their output. Opposition teams must ‘fancy’ it more now too.
I thought they’d splash mega cash on Hazard or Kane or Dybala but these days maybe they just don’t have the cash to splash.
It’s nice to see them coming crashing down to earth a little bit. But in turn it looks like the immediate future might be with the oil clubs
Messi
Nice game so far. Both teams giving it a go.
Now Atletico have become more cautious to try to hit Barca on counter.
Sergi Roberto off injured.
0-0 at HT. Fair result.
Messi and Suarez have been anonymous today.
Ohhhhhhh! Costa almost got to the end of this ball!
That was an amazing last-ditch tackle from Piquè.
Costa at it again. He just can’t help himself.
Could have been penalty to Atletico here, imo.
This Barca side are pure shit. Atletico were starting to knocking on the door in the last minutes so it’s a deserved lead.
