Indeed. I think he will leave by mutual consent at the end of the season. They have a good chance at La Liga if Barcelona continues to under-perform but the La Liga giants are clearly a step below the other European contenders this season. Zidane is an excellent man manager (Well, Bale aside) and an unimpeachable club legend who inspires an excellent team to its maximum potential. The ceiling of the team now is a below that of their last UCL winning squad. Winning the La Liga last season - and perhaps this one as well - would be an excellent achievement and send-off for him.
Zidane watch
- Thread starter Samid
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He's not the nicest fella. His attitude in the whole Valbuena case doesn't really reflect well on him.
Juve were better than Madrid? When Ronaldo was at Madrid, Madrid were better than Juve. When Ronaldo is at Juve, Juve is better than Madrid. But it has nothing to do with Ronaldo. The rest of the Madrid team just instantly declined magically on the day he left.
The funny thing is that the older players at Madrid for the past 2/3 years have performed at a similar level as when Ronaldo was there. Ramos, Casemiro and Benzema have actually been better, Kroos at 30 is still the same player as he was in 2017/18, only Marcelo and Modric have declined but they’re still very good and Mendy and Valverde are good replacements. It’s not like the players that won the 3 CLs in a row are now retired or declining... most of them are at the absolute peak of their abilities. Out of the starting eleven that won 3 CLs in a row, Navas got upgraded on by Courtois, Carvajal is 28, Varane is 27, Ramos is old but he’s the best player in the team, Marcelo has declined but has Mendy to rotate with, Casemiro is 28, Kroos is 30, Modric has declined but Valverde has come into the team, Isco is 28, Ronaldo left and Benzema has been in some of the best form of his career. These are the prime years of most of the team that won 3 Champions League titles in a row and yet they look more likely to go out of the competition in the group stage than of winning the whole thing.
After the first year Madrid becoming worse had nothing to do with Ronaldo leaving. It was because Lopetegui was there instead of Zidane... well Zidane’s been there for almost 2 years and the team is nowhere near as good as it was in his first stint. And Lopetegui’s proven he’s not that bad
of a manager at all too.
So Lopetegui would have been fired even with Cristiano on the team. Ok. We replaced him with Solari
Marcelo, Modric, Kroos, Varane and Casemiro were a disaster that season. Marcelo was also injured a lot and missed the Ajax tie iirc. Plus Varane-Nacho CB pair in the second leg
In 18/19? Are you kidding me? Yeah they got a lot of injuries by the time of the ajax game. But then so did we
Yes. In case it wasn't clear in 17/18 Cristiano was the entire difference between us and juventus
Instantly? No. We were already in decline the season before. In 18/19 Marcelo dropped off a cliff and everyone else got even worse(except Benzema), probably a combination of factors ranging from post world cup funk(Varane in particular), lack of hunger(Kroos, Casemiro), age/mileage/injuries(Modric, Bale, Marcelo, Isco).
No, they haven't. Ramos and Benzema did. Kroos and Casemiro rebounded last season, but they were bad in 18/19. Marcelo is now firmly Mendy's backup, which says it all, and Modric is only still good in small doses
Are we talking about 19/20 to now? Sure, we might have won the CL with Cristiano last season. Highly unlikely, but the team was good, just lacked precisely a world class goal scorer. With luck such as 17/18, we might have done it. And i agree we'd be contenders this year.
Still. Let's not pretend like by 17/18 we were still a dominant side. We got past PSG because of a poor ref, an injury to neymar and their ability to implode. Past juventus thanks to a last second penalty. Past bayern because they literally beat themselves. Beat Liverpool in the final because of a freak injury to Salah and then Karius pissing the game away
I mean, could we have won the CL last season with Cristiano? Maybe. Could we win it this season? Maybe. Would we have been likely to? Feck no
Defense was shambles when Ramos didnt play the return leg, yes, which was a huge factor.
We created a good amount of chances though, Ronaldo would definitely have helped converting more goals, still, i did say Liverpool would have run us over at a later stage regardless, so we would not have won CL that season, even if Zidane and Ronaldo stayed.
He is a nice guy. One of the nicest there is around. All the football players love the guy. He just has a bad habit of meeting up with a circle of unpleasant old friends. Take away the rappers and the Cité thugs he's around with and he would just be an fantastic kid and would still be playing for France.
I think the comment he made against Mendy is taken out of context. He probably justs wants to win the match dearly and doesnt trust Vincinius Jr that much.
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I agree with most of that though. Even if Ronaldo stayed you wouldn’t be as good as you were back then, but you’d still be a whole lot better and among the CL contenders for sure. He’d be exactly what this current Madrid team needs and would make a hell of a difference. For the past 2 years Madrid without Ronaldo has had a clearly better team than Juve without Ronaldo, especially last year. He’d have found it much easier to win another CL title had he stayed in Madrid. This year I believe that might have changed but we’ll see.
The only differences from the Madrid team that won 3 CLs in a row to this current team is that Ronaldo left and that Modric and Marcelo declined... the idea that there was an overall team decline is just not true. Carvajal, Varane, Ramos, Casemiro, Kroos, Isco, Asensio, Lucas Vasquez, Benzema and some others are just as good as they were 3/4 years ago and the manager is the same. Navas got replaced by a better goalkeeper in Courtois and Modric and Marcelo despite declining are still both class and have great competition with Valverde and Mendy. That’s pretty much the whole team at the same level yet the team is nowhere near as good with the main reason obviously being that there’s been a Ronaldo-shaped hole in this team ever since he left.
Not sure how you got lucky in the 2017/18 CL when you had a draw of Spurs, Dortmund, PSG, Juventus, Bayern and Liverpool. That’s about as tough of a draw as any winning team has ever had and the only tie where Madrid wasn’t the better team was against Bayern. And I still think if they played that tie against Bayern 100 times they’d have found a way to win most of them.
Again, no way that's true in 18/19
Yes, we lost our best player, our second best player went from world class to too old for this shit, and our 4th best player went from world class to broken shell. That's not a lot
(Also, Varane spent 2/3 of the season looking like a pub level player, Kroos and Casemiro played the worst they've ever done, Bale mailed in his worst season in 10 years, Isco spent half the season out after appendicitis and never got fit...)
Carvajal got worse, somehow, and Isco has looked like a shell of himself since the appendicitis
Courtois was bad in 18/19 though, and Modric and Marcelo are not still class, the former can't play more than 20 minutes and the latter had like 3 good games in 2 years
Valverde and Mendy aren't great competition, they are nailed on starters because we can't afford not to play them. And please don't tell me they're better than what Juventus has
What
There is an "world class goal getter" shapes hole in this team, but even with Cristiano this would be a worse side than the 17/18 one. And that wasn't a top top side to begin with
PSG were winning at the bernabeu, before the linesman missed a kilometric offside followed by the ref buying a dive by Kroos for a penalty. Ramos literally saved a point blank shot by Rabiot in the second half and the ref missed it. Then emery fecked up, zidane made the right changes and Cristiano helped send them into their usual meltdown. Then neymar got injured for the second leg
Cris scores right away, a great goal, then juventus dominates the next hour, miss a bunch of chances including a couple sitters, then Cristiano again pulls off a wondergoal out of his arse, dybala gets himself sent off and from there we still fail to kill off the tie. Then without Ramos in the second leg we're 3-0 down and headed for extra time(where we would lose) but again thanks in large part to Cris we win a penalty on literally the last play of the game
Bayern made us look like a segunda. The first leg of that tie remains one of the most absurd flukes i've ever seen. The second leg wasn't as absurd but again they were clearly better, missed a few good chances, were denied two stonewall penalties and literally gifted us with one of the most incredible self-inflicted goals ever seen at that level
And then Karius did the same thing twice in the final
Yeah, Bayern-tie was pretty absurd, and on a normal day(or with VAR) we are just out in that tie.
As for PSG, looking back, in hindsight we would probably have gone through anyway, especially with Neymar out, they just completely gave up at home, despite actually still having a shot.
Liverpool-game? Karius made absurd mistakes, but it was really the loss of Salah that was the game-breaker, they looked a completely different team without him, so that was a deserved win.
As for PSG, looking back, in hindsight we would probably have gone through anyway, especially with Neymar out, they just completely gave up at home, despite actually still having a shot.
Liverpool-game? Karius made absurd mistakes, but it was really the loss of Salah that was the game-breaker, they looked a completely different team without him, so that was a deserved win.
What happened with Varane? Is he even good despite not being able to give the leadership or drive that Ramos does?
I find it hard to judge Real these days, mostly because i've seen very, very little of Asensio, Mendy, Rodrygo, Jovic etc. That doesn't feel like a coincidence though. I dont see them because they go out of the champions league relatively early and are usually unused or anonymous amongst players who's best days are gone. The only part of Madrid i'd be envious of atm is Zidane I think.
But i guess i can understand question marks as to his ability to manage younger players. And moving away from Ferguson its become painfully obvious that sometimes you just need to shake things up and move on. Stability with managers is overrated.
I find it hard to judge Real these days, mostly because i've seen very, very little of Asensio, Mendy, Rodrygo, Jovic etc. That doesn't feel like a coincidence though. I dont see them because they go out of the champions league relatively early and are usually unused or anonymous amongst players who's best days are gone. The only part of Madrid i'd be envious of atm is Zidane I think.
But i guess i can understand question marks as to his ability to manage younger players. And moving away from Ferguson its become painfully obvious that sometimes you just need to shake things up and move on. Stability with managers is overrated.
I don't know, maybe, and in all honesty we were the better team in the first half and didn'r deserve to be down. Still, our equalizer shouldn't have happened, they should've had a penalty and red card for sergio in the second, and then they imploded late on. Even without neymar, going into the game with a 2/3-1 lead instead of deficit would have changed things
I agree Salah's injury was the game-breaker for them, but still, the game ended 3-1 and Karius scored two of those 3 goals, literally
Varane is a very good defender who has been massively hyped and overrated for years. He's a very good defender, that's it. Think a better Chris Smalling with much better PR
I can understand Benzema's frustration as being used to play with Ronaldo and now playing with Vinicious, who I think isn't quite good enough for being a regular starter for Real Madrid but even then Vinicius isn't the one at blame here. Long before Ronaldo left the club we should have a better striker to compete with Benzema, who has been very privileged and complacent within the club and being a guaranteed starter despite having quite a lot of dry spells in the club. So he shouldn't be talking like that about his teammate, lastly Zidane is also responsible as he seems to hold on too much to the same group of players but every season it becomes more apparent a change is required.
Well put, exactly what i`ve been thinking, other than the fact that a senior player shouldnt be saying that regardless, of course.
Team stuck by Benzema when he had rough spells, he should follow the same standard that was given to him.
Benzema has been nothing but a water carrier for Ronaldo. Overrated and inconsistent, Ive lost count how many performances he's shown a poor account of actually putting the ball into the back of the net. If he feels that Junior isn't up to scratch he should be as a senior player raising the concern with the player individually or alerting the manager to whatever flaw he's clearly identifying.
Just to put things in perspective, Benzema is the top fifth scorer in CL ever and a phenomenal playmaker on the top of that.
The water carrier tag surely doesn't belong to him.
The water carrier tag surely doesn't belong to him.
The immature cnut one does though
Still, he's our immature cnut. So long as he can keep the bs out of the club
Bad loss against Valenica.
The big two in Spain seem dire.
The big two in Spain seem dire.
Was going to type he'll only be in danger if they go into europa which seems less likely now but 3 of their next 4 games are v Villareal, Sevilla and Atletico Madrid so they could be a fair bit off 1st if they don't shape up and it will become re-run of 17/18.
Don't watch Madrid often but I'm guessing this current young Madrid side is not suited to him
I looked that up and seeing RVN in the top 10 made me so sweet and fuzzy inside. He scored 13 CL goals for you guys and 35 for us.
And btw people who find Benzema overrated are, you know.... I mean you know.
Didn't they have a mediocre start to last season too, from what I remember ?
I won't write him off yet.
I won't write him off yet.
I'll be surprised if Zidane is there next season. It's gonna be a proper slog f9r them this season. Maybe we'll see one of those summers where many big clubs change manager at the same time. Pep, Zidane, Koeman, Tuchel, Ole?, maybe more...
I feel they have a good squad, but lack world class talent up front with Hazard not performing at that level.
Still strange they are struggling so much.
Could see Atletico win it this year. Felix and Suarez is a strong attack.
Still strange they are struggling so much.
Could see Atletico win it this year. Felix and Suarez is a strong attack.
What the feck happened in the match? Soler scored a hat trick of penos and missed one too
Won the title last season by leaning on Courtois, Ramos, Kroos, Modrić and Benezma as key players. That title win probably marked the end of the road for some of the senior players like Marcelo and Modrić. Both are backup players now. Well, mainly.
They have a lot of talented young players in Militão (not shown his Porto form yet), Valverde (potential to be world class), Ødegaard, Vinícius, Rodrygo and Jović (Zidane doesn’t like him imo). Then there’s also Reinier, Brahim and Kubo out on loan. And some other good Castilla prospects. Real Madrid U19s won The UEFA YL last season.
Hazard’s injuries and overall form are a concern, as are Varane‘s displays.
Let’s see if Zidane can build the next great Real side.
They have a lot of talented young players in Militão (not shown his Porto form yet), Valverde (potential to be world class), Ødegaard, Vinícius, Rodrygo and Jović (Zidane doesn’t like him imo). Then there’s also Reinier, Brahim and Kubo out on loan. And some other good Castilla prospects. Real Madrid U19s won The UEFA YL last season.
Hazard’s injuries and overall form are a concern, as are Varane‘s displays.
Let’s see if Zidane can build the next great Real side.
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I don't think Zidane is a good builder. More like a motivator and tactical coach.
Which worked well when he had a world class team.
He helped to build that team, as he was working in Real Madrid back then when Mourinho was our manager. So the problem I see with him is being too attached to the same players, although in many instances it turns good for him in the end but I don't know how long is he going to still depend on them.
Yeah, if you think about it the influence of Zinedine Zidane on Real Madrid's success in the last 10 years or so is enormous. He firstly was introduced as advisor to the manager (wich was Jose Mourinho at the time) .The transfer or Raphael Varrane for example is on him. So he was basically part of the staff when Real made that brilliant 2011-2012 season when they broke a lot of records and won the title in Spain against the all mighty Barcelona of Pep Guardiola! Later he became a sporting director of the team and i am pretty sure as such he recommended Carlo Ancelotti as a replacement of Mourinho. Then he became his assistant and they won together La Decima! We all know what happened when Zidane himself became a head coach of Real Madrid...
It's not suited to anybody since there's about like 7 reliable players in it...
If this were a normal season it might not have mattered. But it's not and it does. You know what all our losses had in common? Marcelo was on the pitch
So how long until Pochettino takes over?
Read that and found it funny, 9 defeats or something in which Marcelo started everytime.
They're going to have to fire him if things get too bad because that's simply how things work at Madrid but he's not at fault. They should keep him regardless of how this season goes and then judge him on how he does next season after they buy a couple of Galacticos in the summer.
They'll land Mbappe, Camavinga and Mane in 1 swoop next summer and they'll be back on track soon after.
They desperately need replacements for Marcelo, Ramos, Modric and, in time to come, Benzema. If Zidane survives this season he needs to have firmed at at least 2/4 of those signings.
Sometimes i feel im the only one who is aware that Mendy exists.
Seriously, he is a good left back, left back position is covered.
They are pants.
I guess that's where they want Pogba
He should tell Perez to get everything what you got to sign Pogba in January.