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The Letter Cristiano Ronaldo Wrote To Real Madrid In Appreciation / Fifa 18 Player Ratings For Real Madrid, Man City, Chelsea And Man United / Messi May Be More Talented But Ronaldo Is Simply A Better Player (2) (3) (4)
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Barcelona Simply Superior To Real Madrid, Man City Seeking Answers by Josnac(m): 6:59pm On Nov 23, 2015 |
When you witness such a lop-sided Clasico, the
focus inevitably shifts to what went wrong for the
loser. And make no mistake about it, plenty did go
wrong for Real Madrid. We'll get to that but first,
it's worth putting some of what Barcelona achieved
Saturday into context.
Hindsight is always 20/20 but you would have
assumed that Lionel Messi would have been
foaming at the mouth to get on the pitch from the
very first minute. He hadn't played in nearly two
months and, by all accounts, had worked well on
his fitness over the international break. Then
there's what happened the last time Messi was left
out. You remember, don't you? The defeat at Real
Sociedad, the sudden stomach ache, the supposed
emergency talks... it nearly derailed Luis Enrique's
tenure.
Playing it safe would likely have meant playing him
from the start. After all, Barca's next fixtures are a
virtually meaningless UCL group game against
Roma at the Camp Nou, the visit of Real Sociedad
and another home date against third-tier
Vilanovense. Should anything go wrong, you
wouldn't really need him anyway for another
couple of weeks.
Instead Luis Enrique showed courage and
character in putting him on the bench, bringing him
on early in the second half. Barca had been flying
without their best player and they would keep
flying him without him, at least for a little while. Not
only that, he also reworked his personnel. Instead
of Munir or Sandro, Sergi Roberto became the third
prong in attack with Neymar and Luis Suarez,
while Andres Iniesta filled a play-making role on
the center left.
Barca were devastating -- the 4-0 win doesn't
fully reflect their superiority on the day. Suarez
and Neymar didn't just continue their scoring
spree, they moved and created with a combination
of selflessness and intelligence that was in stark
contrast to what was happening on the opposite
front. They were blue-collar superstars on the day
while Iniesta turned back the clock, dispensing
assists and magic at every turn.
It's easy to point to Madrid's shortcomings, easier
still to simply explain Barca's dominance through
the lens of their individual talent. But that would
also mean selling them short. This was a team
performance made possible by Luis Enrique's
scheme and the work done on the training pitch.
With a six-point lead in La Liga, a return leg at the
Camp Nou and a relatively soft fixture list for the
next two months (the one exception, possibly, the
trip to Valencia), Messi can now be eased back
into a Barca side that appears to have banished the
"Messi-dependent" tag once and for all.
Many people to blame for Real Madrid's
capitulation
As for Real Madrid, where to begin?
Maybe with the fact that there are no excuses. Of
the 13 players who took the pitch, only two
(Raphael Varane and James Rodriguez) were away
on international duty. The rest had plenty of time to
prepare for the game.
If you don't buy the narrative in which president
Florentino Perez is exerting undue influence on
Rafa Benitez, a lot of the blame must then fall on
the manager. Playing what my colleague Sid Lowe
described as a 6-0-4 formation against this
Barcelona side is like racing NASCAR without
brakes while on drugs: you won't necessarily
crash and be turned into a little puddle of oil, but
the odds are stacked against you. If you leave four
guys standing around up the pitch, force Toni
Kroos and Luka Modric to drop deeper and deeper
and give Ivan Rakitic and Iniesta all the time in the
world to find Suarez and Neymar, you'll pay a
hefty price.
We've been here before. Other than Danilo (who
was horrendous) at right-back, these are the same
outfield players that Carlo Ancelotti had to deal with
last year. He put them in a slightly more
conventional 4-3-3 and somehow persuaded
Kroos, Modric, James and Karim Benzema to
sacrifice themselves for the cause. It worked for a
while and then stopped working, mainly because
footballers aren't machines and you can only
expect attacking players to run themselves into
the ground defensively for so long. But while it
worked, it at least allowed Madrid to keep Bale and
Ronaldo in the lineup even when they did little off
the ball.
Benitez has the same problem, only without
Ancelotti's "horse-whisperer" ability to manage
superstar egos, and his solution made things
worse. There may be a parallel universe where
Bale can play productively in the congested
spaces patrolled by Sergio Busquets and Rakitic,
but it's not this one. The moment James was
moved out wide, he stopped tracking back, though
he was less awful than the others on the ball. Out
on the other flank, Ronaldo was even more
isolated: he'd end up with fewer touches than
Keylor Navas. And Benzema clearly wasn't ready,
whatever the reason.
It's hard to accept that Benitez didn't see this. He
built his entire career on balance and tactical nous
and we know that in previous games against
opponents who didn't have an Iniesta or a Neymar,
he often deployed Casemiro to protect the back
four. Not in the Clasico. Not this time -- he played
the big guns in positions where (you'd assume)
Perez would play them in a game of FIFA 16.
The premise was that Real Madrid needed to be
more attacking, but you're not more attacking if
your creators in midfield are pinned back by
endless grunt work. And you're not more attacking
if your stellar forward quartet rarely see a decent
ball.
Did Benitez play this line-up because he thought it
would give Madrid the best possible chance of
winning? Or did he do it because he thought it's
what his boss wanted? That's the million dollar
question.
Liverpool were superb but why were Man City so
bad?
Once again, Jurgen Klopp was careful to dampen
enthusiasm following Liverpool's 4-1 win at
Manchester City. His message was basically
"don't expect this every week." Not for now, at
least.
He's right. Liverpool were utterly devastating and
could easily have doubled their score. The high-
octane counter-pressing was straight out of the
early Klopp playbook, the one with Robert
Lewandowski, Shinji Kagawa and Kuba
Blaszczykowski hunting down opponents and
making them pay. And at the right times, we also
saw the front men standing off their opponents, in
part to recapture their breath, in part to suck them
forward before battering them again with the press.
Adam Lallana, James Milner and Philippe Coutinho
in particular appear to have spent the break
absorbing Klopp's concepts. But before we get
carried away, we ought to point out that this was
also the worst Manchester City performance in a
long, long time. I don't know that a Vincent
Kompany-Nicolas Otamendi partnership would
have turned in a Keystone Kops routine like the
one submitted by Eliaquim Mangala and Martin
Demichelis. Yaya Toure probably had his worst
half as a City player (and he's had a fair few off-
days). And sure, they missed David Silva and
Fernandinho (the latter only came on at half-time).
Conventional wisdom says that when faced with
the high press, you either play through it (if you
have the personnel to do it, and maybe on the day
City did not) or you hit it long, whether for a target
man (which City don't have) or into space for your
speedsters to latch on to (City do have those in the
form of Jesus Navas, Kun Aguero and Raheem
Sterling).
But City did none of that and Manuel Pellegrini will
want to figure out why it all fell apart. You can
scapegoat Demichelis and Mangala all you like but
the problems were elsewhere and they weren't
just about personnel.
Mancini's making real progress with Inter
On the evidence of the past few Inter Milan games,
Roberto Mancini gets it. He knows that
performances matter more than results when it
comes to assessing the health of your team and he
didn't let the string of 1-0 victories fool him.
The Inter boss has regularly changed scheme and
personnel over the past month in an effort to find
the right formula and he did it again on Sunday
night against Frosinone. The scheme changed from
3-5-2 to 4-2-3-1. Out went Rodrigo Palacio, Gary
Medel, Juan Jesus and Danilo D'Ambrosio; in
came Adem Ljajic, Stevan Jovetic, Alex Telles and
Jonathan Biabiany. In went four goals against
Frosinone, with none conceded at the other end.
It's baby steps, sure, but admittedly against a
buccaneering Frosinone side who concede space,
it looked as if things were clicking. Just as they
had, with a different set-up in previous games. And
still, Mancini changed things around.
There are fewer question marks surrounding this
Inter side than there were a month ago and that's
a credit to the manager. The real test will come
next Monday when they travel to the San Paolo to
take on second-place Napoli.
Leicester deserve to be leading the league
Yep, Leicester City are top of the Premier League.
Since April 1 they've played 25 games in all
competitions, winning 17, drawing six and losing
just two. Nobody has done better in England; in
fact, across Europe, only Barcelona (2.38 points
per game) have had a better run than the Foxes
(2.28) during that period.
I hope to get into this some more detail at some
point, but what's been annoying is the absolute
gob-smacking surprise expressed by some
commentators. Leicester were very good even
before their strong run at the end of last season:
simply put, they had played much better than their
results. Nigel Pearson left in the summer but he
wasn't replaced by some schlub. The guy who
took over, Claudio Ranieri, is a hugely experienced
manager who, in his last Premier League season,
finished second and came within a couple of
bonehead decisions (by him) of reaching the
Champions League final.
Since then, he's had his lows: getting sacked by
Valencia, failing to make an impact at Inter Milan
(not that he's the only one to do so), failing to win
any of his four games as manager of Greece. But
he's also had undeniable highs: leading Parma to a
great escape from relegation, taking over a newly
promoted Juventus side and finishing third, coming
within a whisker of winning the Double with Roma
(in what would turn out to be Jose Mourinho's
Treble-winning season, no less), winning
promotion with Monaco and then finishing runner-
up behind Paris St. Germain.
Most importantly, Leicester got themselves a guy
who is a pragmatist, someone who knows when
not to mess with stuff that ain't broken and who
knows how to fix stuff that is. Rather than
overhauling Leicester, he tweaked them. And he's
been rewarded by results.
Celebrate Vardy, but also pre-Premier League
football
Speaking of Leicester, Jamie Vardy has scored in
10 consecutive games, equalling Ruud Van
Nistelrooy's mark. Obviously, that's the Premier
League record, not the English top-flight record.
The guy who holds that mark, Jimmy Dunne, set it
some 84 years ago for Sheffield United and it's
simply a less sexy story to say that Vardy is
chasing a record set by someone most have never
heard of while playing for a club several
magnitudes smaller than Manchester United.
The Premier League loves to emphasize its
"otherness" from what came before. (That's why,
no doubt, many more people know that the Premier
League's all-time goalscorer, with 260 goals, is
Alan Shearer and fewer remember Jimmy
Greaves, who notched 357.) But that doesn't mean
the rest of us need to follow suit.
There was football before the Premier League. And
even the argument that the Premier League was
somehow superior to what came before -- and I'm
not sure it was, for a long time (Dunne's time, in
fact) the English league was far and away the best
in Europe, something that can't be said for its
current incarnation -- doesn't quite hold water. It's
not as if somebody flicked a switch in 1992. The
Premier League too has evolved.
By all means celebrate Vardy even if he doesn't
break the record. But don't forget Dunne. Or
Greaves. Or Dixie Dean and his 60 goals in
1927-28. Or Peter Shilton's 849 appearances in
the English top flight.
Violence still exists in modern football
At times, particularly those who follow this sport
through the lens of TV, can tend to think that
there's a visceral, sometimes violent subtext that
for better or worse is part of the game's history, at
least in Europe.
We were reminded of that this past weekend. A
West Ham supporter was stabbed outside White
Hart Lane, some 200 fans were arrested after
vicious fighting before Bayern's game away to
Schalke and, in Athens, the big derby between
Panathinaikos and Olympiacos was called off after
Alfred Finnbogason was hit by a flare and fans
invaded the pitch.
Let this serve as a reminder. There are many
different reasons why we're drawn to the game.
For many, there's a strong element of tribalism
and for some, there's the allure of violence,
especially the kind which they believe they can get
away with. The antiseptic corporate veneer that
has descended on this game hasn't changed that.
Lukaku's form causes further insult to Chelsea
Romelu Lukaku's two strikes in Everton's 4-0
hammering of Aston Villa launched the Toffees into
seventh place and took his career total to 51
Premier League goals. It's telling to note the guys
in the Premier League era who hit the half-century
mark at a younger age: Robbie Fowler, Michael
Owen, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney.
Equally remarkable is the fact that this is Lukaku's
fifth season in England but he made just one start
(and eight appearances in total) during his first
campaign back in 2011-12. It doesn't necessarily
mean he'll hit the heights of the other four, of
course, but it speaks to the fact that he's been
productive as he's matured and that's a rarity for
young center-forwards. There's so much focus on
his size, which is understandable, but in fact his
movement and awareness are what set him apart.
Chelsea made his loan deal permanent back in the
summer of 2014 when they acquired Diego Costa
to be their main center-forward. Given that Costa
has missed nearly a third of Chelsea's league
starts as a result of injuries and suspensions and
given the fact that his understudies (Didier Drogba,
Radamel Falcao and Loic Remy) haven't exactly
set the world alight, you wonder if maybe they
wish they could have that one back.
Scolari continues to rebuild his reputation
It's not a bad way to bounce back. Five-hundred
and one days after the darkest night of his career
-- the 7-1 thumping at the hands of Germany in
the World Cup semifinal -- Luiz Felipe Scolari made
history. "Felipao" guided Guangzhou to the Asian
Champions' League final. The Chinese champions
beat the United Arab Emirates' Al Ahli 1-0 on
aggregate and the previous month, he had won the
Chinese title.
It doesn't begin to wipe the memory of the darkest
day in the history of the Selecao (and Scolari's role
in it) but the victory makes him only the second
manager ever, after Marcello Lippi, to win the
World Cup as well as the Champions League or its
equivalent in two different continents.
Coquelin injury hurts Arsenal more than defeat
Arsenal conceded one shot on goal and somehow
contrived to lose 2-1 at West Bromwich Albion.
When you lose in those circumstances -- a
botched penalty, an own goal -- it's not the end of
the world.
But you do wonder about how Francis Coquelin's
injury (he won't be back before January) will affect
matters. And even more, you wonder how it's
possible that a team like Arsenal find themselves
so dependent on Coquelin, a guy who 12 months
ago was, to most neutrals, an obscure jobber on
loan at a second-tier side. m.espn.go.com/soccer/blogs/blogpost?w=1fqiy&i=TOP&id=2724155&topslot=1&wjb= |
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