I swear more than half of Vinicius' goals are due to a deflection. This guy is just such a jammy player.
Yup might sound crazy, but I actually think Barca has a much higher chance winning the league than A.Madrid UNLESS Messi decides to go into sulking mode. There is a reason why Barca has dominated La Liga the past 10-11 years, the reason is called: Messi.
I am never praising our team at half time ever again. Every single time it is bad luck. I will resume shit talking and pre 2009 negativity in hopes that we can finish out games correctly. This game had 4-2 written all over it.
It was a matter of time Injuries just rocked his hard. We saved a valuable point here. We just need to beat Atletico and we are in prime position to win the league again.
We win this game if not for that decision. Sociedad created nothing outside of that timespan. Forfeiting the midfield battle to accommodate Isco and Asensio with more space to attack centrally is not something that a manager who is learning from his mistakes does.
You said the same trash last year and just walk by it all when you end up wrong for the millionth time. I'm one of those posters that believes this forum is open to all and welcome all voices; even those I don't care for..... however you? Horsey probably needs to look for permanent solution.
I don't see how Mariano is taking heat but Duro is "liked". Dude was worse than Mariano in every aspect and Mariano was horrendous.
You can choose to look at it that way, but this is hardly vintage Real Madrid, either. In fact, when you look at the lineup Barcelona threw out there this past weekend, then look at what we threw out today, who would you take? Try to strip your biases when looking at those team sheets and names. What you're saying about Koeman's Barcelona is what they're saying about this Real Madrid team. Why do you think we're both looking up at Atleti right now, anyway? Both of us are on pace for 80-81 points right now. Wanna know where that stacks up with Barcelona's last few championship teams? 2018-'19: 87 points 2017-'18: 93 2015-'16: 91 2014-'15: 92 Even in 2016-'17 when they finished second, they had a 90 point season. We had no fewer than 90 between 2014-'15 through 2016-'17, either. Atleti's current pace has them around 91 right now, and they're unlikely to get there if I had to take a guess. This isn't vintage Real Madrid. This isn't vintage Barcelona. As you can tell from the CL, this isn't vintage La Liga. It's why I expected Atalanta to beat us in this stage of the CL and, after only getting 1-0 with an extra man for 73 minutes in Bergamo, I still expect them to beat us. We're going to need the cavalry by the time the return leg rolls around, or at least Rodrygo and Benzema. Who knows anything with Hazard at this point.
So we now know why he changed the system at half time. 🎙| Zidane:“We had more than enough chances to win the game. It is 2 points dropped at home. I changed the system at half-time because I wanted to change the way we pressed Sociedad. But I changed again, back to a 433.”— Madrid Xtra (@MadridXtra) March 1, 2021
He wanted to change the way we press? We had the ball and Sociedad didn't show anything in the first half and you want to change the way we press? It definitely changed the way we press because we couldn't do anything until they scored.
I am disappointed but not shocked in the way we often get worse in the second half. Should have stuck to hoping to draw a PK or FK in dangerous territory while absolutely dominating their center midfield. This reminds me a little bit of last season, where for long stretches we had trouble finishing out games and go from 0-0 or 1-0 to the wrong result really quickly. I'm more or less neutral on Zidane at this point with all due respect of his legacy with us, but I've become increasingly inclined to think that without a goalscorer, we go from winning 80%+ of our games to about 60%. The sincere hope is we learn, stick to our familiarity, and grind it out vs. Atalanta while we wait for injured players to return. All will be sort of forgiven if Hazard pulls a resurgence and scores 10 goals in 8 games and gets us a CL trophy. (Wishful thinking).
I personally don’t mind tweaks, I actually want to see them but you shouldn’t tweak for the hell of it, we had Sociedad pinned and a goal coming was only a matter of time, they were the ones who needed to make adjustments, not us, we needed to simply do more of the same.
Mariano is horrendous with the ball. There was a good counter chance for him in the first half and I knew he'd go for the wild shot rather than wait for the help to arrive at far post or at least take on the defender to get a better angle. Duro only had that header half chance and another play in the box which he read well passing to Case. Had Case made the extra pass, Rodrygo had a good look at the goal.
Sociedad came out in the second half all over us, we concede, then go back to what we were doing and they are harmless again. Could be a costly blunder in the long run. I figure Zidane's "i changed it, but then i changed it back" is his way of saying "sorry guys, my bad". There's a lot of football to be played both in the positive and the negative sense and all teams will drop points. But i do think at the moment we're an outsider in the title race.
I'm always optimistic until it's mathematically impossible for us to win the title, but if Atletico are eliminated in UCL then our chances of defending La Liga will be very slim. They have a game less and if they win it it's gonna be an 8 points gap between us. There's 13 games left (14 for Atletico), we are getting closer to the finish line and if we hit another injury streak like this month then it's game over.
Tey have 4 matches in 10 days though, one of them vs Real Madrid and one of them vs Chelsea. I worry more about Barca than Atleti to be honest.
We score less than Atletico. How's that for a stat. I think AM will win the league. Maybe putting us in third position will wake Flo up.
Yeah, i wondered even before the match if this is a "must win" game on paper or one that you can afford to slip up. Yes, the table looks dire, but as i said: This is what Atleti has ahead of them: 07.03 : Real Madrid 10.03: Athletic Bilbao 13.03: Getafe 17.03: Chelsea 21.03: Alaves That's a match vs Madrid, Athletic 3 days later, then Bordala's butchers 3 days later, then the Chelsea return leg where you'll try to save face 4 days later, until the team can catch their breath with a manageable opponent in Alaves. This is what Real Madrid have ahead of them during the same time frame: 07.03: Atletico Madrid 13.03: Elche 16.03: Atalanta 20.03: Celta We're 5 points behind. Not 8, not 10, not watever hypothetical number people make up. We win against Atleti and we're down to 2 points. 2! So yeah. No time for predictions right now.