It was inside the San Siro. Madrid had just beaten Inter (0-2), the players collected their belongings before heading out of the Milan Coliseum, when Zidane left, in his press conference, a phrase that is marking the passage of the white team to throughout this season: “I’m happy with the players because when they have to wear, they wear. We had a great game”. And that is the feeling that Madrid is leaving this season: to rival with less name, the whites come out with less effort, less intensity, less intimidating capacity… in short, with less character. In short, they don’t get …
LaLiga Santander
* Data updated as of December 31, 2020
It is not the first time that has happened to Zidane’s men in this campaign: the first symptom was given against Cádiz. It was the fifth game for the whites. They faced a recently promoted, Cádiz, but only pressed after Lozano opened the scoring in the 15th minute. The whites were overcome by the tactical plan of Álvaro, the coach of the Cádiz people: two well-equipped lines, together, waiting for the attacks (planes) of the whites. The visiting coach did not mind giving the ball to the whites, while he had his players organized. Madrid showed that they had underestimated their rival, they were lazy in some sections of the match. Passive, without desire and without grit (for example, they only let the whites prevail in the different duels in the first half: 41%), he lost the security and the essence of the game that had led him to win 10 of the last 11 games of the 2019-20 campaign that helped him win the League.
Worse was a few days later. The madridistas opened the European competition against the Ukrainian Shakhtar. Another rival considered ‘weak’: the Ukrainians left winning (0-3) at halftime in the middle of an important white caraja. Ineffective in pressure, miners They killed Zidane’s men in just 14 minutes. With a fluid, fast, vertical game, they surprised the whites, incompetent to stop the avalanche. The defeat, in part due to the strange alignment that Zizou designed, also came from the poor physical condition of the squad and bad pressure that unbalanced the white balance: Casemiro was uncontrolled and out of place. All this led to a general lack of coordination of the entire team.
Everything seemed to calm down after the triumph at the Camp Nou (1-3). Despite the defeat against Valencia (4-1, with three penalties against), and the victory against Inter (0-2), everything fell like a house of cards against Alavés and again against Shakhtar . Before the whole babazorro, two defensive errors deprived them of the victory … plus the lack of ideas, effort, courage … without offensive resources (65% of the attacks came from the wings, which makes any attack predictable) It is very difficult to win, but if you do not cast it either, it gets complicated. The whites have played well against the teams that, a priori, with more poster. And he has gotten carried away with those who seem weaker. It has been carried away. And no team is weak before jumping onto the pitch …
