I know this has been discussed in several of the other threads, but watching Villarreal made me want to focus on this question in one thread.
Re: Qick Poll: Why Doesn't RM Go Further In The Champion's League What makes you think there is one answer applicable to each of the last few seasons? Different seasons, different reasons.
Re: Qick Poll: Why Doesn't RM Go Further In The Champion's League Talking about this year alone i can sum it up as our team choked. Gago's reputation took a beating after that match. I still think he will grow to be world class but he's obviously not there yet. The question is can we get him there? A coach should be able to instill confidence in his players, this is one thing Ramos has come up short in several times. Even Robben, who in the past decimated Liverpool, was playing scared. You'd be hard pressed to think of a player other than Casillas who played at an acceptable level over the two legs. I think its vital that come next year, if Juande is still around, for him to be able to better prepare our players for these big CL matches. That wasn't our only problem though. Our team isn't perfect as it stands, several positions need to be improved, but its definitely capable of playing better than they did against Liverpool. Also thinking back to the first leg, that was the first time Juande seemed totally out of ideas. Thats my only explanation to his lack of substitutions. The sad thing is the only one he did make was pretty much the wrong one. A decent Guti or a happy Sneijder might have tipped that first leg in our favor but we'll never know.
Re: Qick Poll: Why Doesn't RM Go Further In The Champion's League Why haven't you mentioned "Style of Play" as an option. IMHO, the way football is played has changed for the last 3 years or so.. Now to win in Europe a team either has to play 1) Beautiful possession football, a bit slow in pace, but with very creative attack minded mid fielders and free roaming forwards, who have the ability to create space intelligently, to find the net (Barcelona) 2) High speed football with the power of defensive mid fielders and very fast wingers who would catch the other teams off-guard all of a sudden, after playing a strong defensive game for most of the time..(EPL teams). In my opinion, we fail in Europe because we are neither of the two, and we play in a style which is 50% of both..We try to play a slow possession game with two defensive mid fielders...(It might work in league, but definitely not in Europe..)
Re: Qick Poll: Why Doesn't RM Go Further In The Champion's League Sorry for not being more clear, but I am focusing on this season. Though I think some of the problems go back much further.
Re: Qick Poll: Why Doesn't RM Go Further In The Champion's League I think a lot of the humilation by liverpool was psychological - we lost the tie before the kick of in the first round becuase we were afraid of liverpool...and they took advantage. However i think fear is a symptom and not the casue of our CL strife. The real reason is that we simply lack the quality to compete at that level. raul and higuain is not a CL winning pair. cannavaro and heinze have both gone to seed we overrate pepe and ramos - both have serious weaknesses gago, marcelo lack experience
Imo we lack players that can make the difference. Players like Zizou who step up in big games and lead their team to glory. Players who can dribble past players with ease would be welcome also. Our only player who comes close to that was Robben but he's very afraid of physical games imo and that makes him lose his confidence. Selling Robinho was the right thing since he demanded it but not replacing him (although we had very little time, we knew he was gone so we should have done something) was a horrible mistake. Sneijder & VDV have failed tbh. They are not what we expected them to be. They are only average midfielders imho and that is what we lack, a world class midfield duo/trio. I have a feeling that a long time will pass till we reach the finals let alone win it but thats just a silly guess.
I miss a strong Juventus and a strong Milan team in the Champions League. Also, the fact that the Bundesliga teams have been narrowed down to Bayern (and with them being that far off of being contenders...), and as far as the Primera Division goes, i consider the Valencia of the past a stronger team than this Villareal.Sorry if some people think otherwise, but i'm fairly sure we would have made it past Panathinaikos, and Villareal would've "struggled" against Liverpool "as well". There isn't much variety in the Champions League to be honest.We, and a few others need to make a huge effort to come back and hopefully improve the competition.
Chaos at the top. Constant changes of management, coaches and even players will bring you nothing good in a long run. The other reason is mismanagement of our cantera players, who should be a backbone of this team. If we are talking about this season alone: Pedja and Calderon.
6 + 5 rule might help to cancel the monopoly of EPL... which might be refreshing and good for the competition and there will be more surprises and it willl support the philosophies of using the youth product of our skillful academy... i think it can spark our team to performing well again in the competition i think...just my opinion.
I agree that our Castilla players weren't give many chances, if any, in the last seasons. But we are talking about the CL here and i doubt that there is a Cantera player who have an impact on CL games.
The option that has been missed is that the premier league is a much more competitive league in terms physical play. Look what Liverpool did to us over two legs and then a few weeks later get absolutely pumped by Chelsea.
Why go further a few weeks later, when you could have gone further less and seen they did the same to Manchester, away from home. Manchester is not accustomed to physicial play either?
And Liverpool thumped ManU just after us who many thought were the best. It's not so simple that you can draw large conclusions from single games. If Barca gets outmuscled and thumped by an English team, then I'll start to buy it.
Not sure how they are going to get the 6+5 law through EU regulations as it so fundamentally goes against the basis of the EU. Anyways, this seasons Champions League exit has to do with, in my opinion awful tactical decisions by Juande Ramos against Liverpool. Whilst you can argue that Liverpool has players better suited for going far in the Champions League, our pathetic display at Anfield can't be excused. It was the easiest thing in the world for Rafa Benitez to counter Juande Ramos' basic 4-4-2. He put three central midfielders (Gerrard, Alonso, Mascherano) up against our two (Gago, Lass), which neutralized them easily. He also made their wingers (Kuyt, Babel) assist their fullbacks (Aurelio, Arbeloa) in shutting down our wide players (Robben, Sneijder), which put them out of the game aswell. We were left with nothing going forward, no creativity in midfield. And as a result the game was one way traffic against our goal.
Different seasons, different reasons. We just seem to find a reason why each season. For the most part our gameplay as a whole has not been fluid from the years of old and the instability form our management and front office is shown in our passing. If it isn't us dealing with injuries, it's us playing too slow with a full team. If it isn't us underrating our opposition, it's us giving them too much respect and not attacking enough at home. There are so many.... Another major constant is out of the last 5 years only once did we finish first out of our group. We set ourselves up to face a titan early and succumb to them. The irony is that when we finally was first in our group they gave us a hard fixture anyways with Roma. There is always something....
- We play with 1 forward who can create his own goals: Higauin. Raul (and Huntelaar) rely on others to score, mark the midfielders supplying the ball and you take strikers like this out of the game. - Sneijder and Heinze don't bring width to the field. Heinze brings nothing to the left at all, and Sneijder goes to the centre practically always. If Marcelo doesn't play the only player you have to worry about is Robben. - Holy cows: Raul would not be a starting forward for any other top European club, the only reason he does so for us is because he doesn't suck completely and history. He stops us from going after better forwards, and he stops better performing players to be used in the starting 11. Or actually be used in their position.
There were different reasons for each season. Generally what i've noticed is that some of our players are not good enough. You can carry one or two in a team but when there are 4-5 mediocre players in a team than you know you have problems. We have an old striker who can't create goals for himself. We have an old and horrible LB in henize who gives us nothing going forward and makes defensive mistakes. We have an old CB who is prone to wtf moments. We have 2-3 mediocre players (gago, rafa, marcelo) who are good enough for the league but are found out as soon as they face top quality european teams ('pool, united). I would say our beloved higuain is also not a CL level forward yet but since his growth is pretty good i'm willing to give him time. Same goes for marcelo if he can continue his recent form. Gago also. These players are good enough for the league and we might even see some amazing performances from them during the season but you need a different quality player to play the really BIG games. Our style of play is also hurting us. We are so predictable. This is one of the major major disadvantage of having a revolving door manager policy. We had the cetanaccio inspired style of capello (which we all said was not the madrid way) then we had the 4-3-3 of schuster which worked in the league but we didn't have the personell to pull it off in the CL. Now juande with his 4-4-2. What is our style?? How do we play? We seems to still have the capello counter attack mentality but we try to fuse it with the current coaches style. It ends up being not one or the other. Somebody mentioned that the new style of play in europe is the strong midfielders and quick tempo of play. I think that quickness of play is misinterpreted a lot. It doesn't mean all 10 players have to run at a million miles an hour all the time. I believe spain showed everyone the way to play. They used slow patient build up from the back (like most of the premiera teams do) but they had very quick players at the apex of the attack and exploded all of a sudden with the quick passing of the midfielders and the quickness and positioning of the forwards. So their quickness was not in the wingers running like madmen on the touchlines but rather quickness in the final third with good passing midfielders. I think a team can win the CL playing that. Or we can just play the cetanaccio. So many teams have been succesful using it but i don't think thats us. Its just not madrid. I could go on and on about other things which i think are lacking but this post is already too long. (i haven't even started on the front office) I think calderon had a good idea. He thought he would buy players like wesley, rafa who are not considered superstars or "cracks" (i've heard many people say they are mediocre) and give them time to make a strong foundation of our team. Then he would add the garnish by bringing in 1 or 2 brilliant players (he thought robben would be one maybe ronaldo) and we would be a force to reckon with. He thought that he would have the right mix of youngsters (wesley, marcelo, higuain gago) and experienced players (raul, ruud, fabio, heinze) that would make our team strong. Pity it didn't work out that way.
Alma, don't tell me you didn't see the old Batman series. I think it aired during your teen years, you must have watched it once or so.
I picked all of the first 5. Also, the tactics used were not appropriate, and some of the players are not CL quality.