Atletico Madrid vs Real Madrid

Damn those last few minutes were pretty scary, i thought we were going to concede.

I think Benz expected players to rush to him in open space as opposed to stick to CR. He doesn't play with a scorer's mentality when both CR and Bale are on the pitch... and it's by design unfortunately.

Carlo has to ask him to go into scoring mode like he was when Bale was out EVEN WHEN Bale is in. When you ask him to play predominantly a playmaker role, he's too unselfish. He's still unselfish when asked to be a scorer so you might as well push him to have that mentality.

I hate to belabor the point... but Bale coming back has really messed up how we play and the form of our players. Roles aren't well defined and we're lopsided to boot.

Ramos was horrible and Iker almost bottled it. Other than that, everyone other than Bale was ok to good imo.

Ramos, as usual, gave me cancer. And Bale has once again showed every Madrid fan he can be on the pitch for 90 minutes and you'll not notice him.

Bale's crap form has been so commonplace that it is honestly boring seeing him play dog shit and look forward to when he sinks lower and/or actually has a decent game. Not good or great, decent.

My lack of faith remains pretty much lacking but we did considerably well from the last visit at the Calderon.

no marcelo against team like athetico gonna be very hard for us on 2nd leg. that's really bad.

Didn't think Marcelo was adventurous in the first half and thats when we had our best period. I think we can manage for one game without him

This game was a great advert for la liga especially with no BPL teams in the CL.

We really should've scored in the first half. I hope we don't regret it. As for the Bale chance, that was stopped by a great block. I'm more disappointed with Benz. I genuinely hope/think he didn't know how much space he had, but most of our team almost instinctively think :'give it to Ronaldo' & I hope that didn't play a part in this.

There's no way we'll keep a clean sheet in the second leg.
2-1 to us.

We had 3 clear cut chances against Atletico.. that is as far as we were going to create against them.  

Bale shot is just how a GK will expect him to shoot. Plain bad finishing and great goalkeeping combined.

Benzema was a freaking joke. Both were massive chances and even a 12 year old could read his moves before 5 seconds. What the hell was that ? Benzema's record against Atletico is steeping into new levels.

I really don't know how to feel about this huge problem we have in hand. So much problems that we could easily get rid of had we a less stubborn manager:

1. Bale is a liability and as long as he's fit, he'll play.

2. Marcelo will miss the second leg.

3. Varane will likely be benched for the return leg, which is a crime against humanity after his world-class performance last night.

4. Unless we make sure to not miss the few clear-cut chances we're going to get against Atlético, which is impossible if you have someone like Bale in your team, the 4-3-3 won't work.

So to sum everything up: We're trying to qualify to the semi-finals with a visibly unconvincing 4-3-3 formation with a huge liability in Bale, without Marcelo, and possibly without Varane too.

We could field our 4-4-2 formation and put this game to sleep in the first half, but noooo..

The tie is still 50 -50, but my god! We're helping Atlético qualify so much without even trying.