UCL Semi Final: Manchester City vs Real Madrid

Benz won't be healed.... they keep rushing him back because of our dire CF situation and it keeps getting aggravated.  The healing period is min 15 days.  You play and the clock resets if you feel anything... so it's 15 days from yday.

Reason he played yday was that Jese didn't have 90 mins in him and you couldn't bring in Benz as a sub in case he got injured.  It will be the exact same situation next week.  You can't cut, accelerate or do anything very sudden with a muscle injury.  They basically numb it with a cortisone shot and you try to do what you can.  

The guy plays injured to help the team and you guys are all over him for it

I can just imagine what you would do to Benz if he had the game Lewa had against Atleti

Zidane has introduced absolutely nothing creatively into our game. We still wins matches based on individual brilliance and set piece goals. Which is why we missed Ronaldo so badly..Jese came on and we immediately looked better, much better movement despite being a poor CF fit.

Z where is your guardiola philosophy? Is turning Into Rafa Benitez esque approach at first hard team is not the way to go. Midfield were clearly not given enough freedom to push forward. At best one midfielder pushed up and two stayed back. Full backs didn't go up either. Basically tried to ride the Bale individual magic train and failed.

And the ignorance continues

How's he supposed implement a drastically different style in mid-season without having a mercato to get the players he wants. Magic? lol. All you can do is make adjustments that are feasibly executable in the short term in order for the team to function. After that, you wait until the summer to get a squad that works for you and a training camp/preseason to work on implementing a new philosophy.

easily the most casual fans on the internet, don't even know what to be mad about, but as long as it another chance to take a dig at benzema, they line up sheep to ramble garbage and agree with each other, still can't name 2 good things bale or lucas did all game and they were fit , but focus on the guy playing with injury, biggest noobs by far.

stop talking footy its embarrassing and lewa didn't even notice him against atleti, yet you sheep act like he is twice the player benzema is , silly casual madrid fans can only judge players off youtube comments.

P.S fan favorites on here are flopsco and fatmes , madrid fan logic.

lewa had about as much impact as an unfit benzema ffs, I love this forum .

chad4401 wrote:lewa had about as much impact as an unfit benzema ffs, I love this forum .

The last time Benzema performed against Atletico was ... error

the funny thing about all of this hate, is that all the stupid things about mentality, movement, aggression and killer instinct has been proven to be nonsense, you lot have to rely on his injuries for your conviction, so desperate to prove you aren't noobs about players, tactics and performances.

killing yourselves for lewa and he has never ever been a better player than benzema .

Benzema played through injury to help the team? That's strange because he didn't help us in anything last night. Unless you're counting ball loss and poor positioning as "help", then I don't know what you're talking about. He should've just stayed home and focused on alleviating his injury instead of taking up valuable space and making zero contribution. The second he went off our overall play improved. Hadn't he played at all, we might've been able to score.

As for Z, the only manager I could see in his silhouette last night was Rafa. There's nothing, even in the slightest, from him that is reminiscent of Pep. We only score through individual brilliance or set-pieces. There's no concrete, palpable plan whatsoever. Other than reducing the line gaps and getting the team to defend more, he hasn't done anything tactically to be excited about. We won against Wolfsburg through individual brilliance not tactics, I hope you realize that.

I would choose him over Rafa any day of the week. But my god, I never thought he would actually copy the latter's cowardly tactics out of all the managers he visited and is supposedly inspired by.

In my book, he failed big time in the first leg against City.

shadexticos wrote:Aubemayang would be better. That frontline is too slow without Ronaldo.
But don't go saying Morata is garbage just to prove he is not a better option.
He scores crucial goals for juventus. Remember how we got knocked out last season?
If he is Garbage, I wonder why he has been linked to almost all the top clubs, including Guardiola's City.
He might not be the solution, as I would prefer Aubemayang, but morata is not garbage

Playing for Us and playing for Juventus is a whole other ball game.
I remember his time here in madrid. It was pathetic and not worthy of mention. I liked Callejon or Joselu more. Carlo Ancelotti gave him plenty of chances to impress and show he can be relied on and Morata didn't take them. What else do you call garbage other than incompetent or Insufficient? Plus towards the end he got entitled. I would not welcome him back. We can do far better than Morata.

Besides, he is a 3rd-4th choice reserve for Juventus, he has Mandzukic, dybala, and even zaza ahead of him. Since when has being 3rd rate or less is good enough to play for Real Madrid? We need competence and the right attitude. not incompetence and entitlement.

I would much rather give someone who has something to prove like Mayoral a chance than someone who has wasted theirs. Plus Mayoral is free. Save the money for better reinforcements such as midfield.
Benzema is playing injured and he did have a very bad game yesterday but we are not a crisis where we need a new cf immediately. Benzema will do better the 2nd leg and both Benz and Bale will step it up a notch. Benz has played injured before. I have little concern though I do admit his technical ability is questionable atm.

The real concern is the midfield as that dictates whether we triumph or struggle in attack. CR7 missing is of no concern for me. Our creative output with having benz playing injured being a variable is very troubling. Especially with Toni Kroos being badly out of form.

We need either one of Isco or James the 2nd leg. And that troubles me the most. Neither have the right attitude to help us.

Morata only scores in counter attack situations... and that's not much for Juve.  He's not even the starter.  He rotates.  He only has 9 goals all comps for Juve this season and 13 last year.

You guys have to understand what he is:  A role player and a specific  one at that.  If you play teams like Barca, Bayern or Madrid where you will sit back and defend... then counter with speed, he is useful.  When you're the team who is initiating play, he's below average.  

But he could be useful as a backup to Benz.  He's not going to start for Juve as they're looking to upgrade there (rumors of Cavani, Berardi, Lacazette, etc.). So it's not like he's walking away from a great situation for himself.

I'm not gonna pretend Benzema played through an injury because of some undying love for the club and man kind. Zidane told him to play and he did it because that is just how it is.

Should have never started to begin with but we really have no CF to use at that elite level other than Benzema. Jese came on and did not offer much besides erratic running and poor dribbling and he still did more than Benzema. Understandably, the man was half fit against very physical players in Kompany and Otamendi with Fernando and Fernandinho doing sled dog work.

As for Zidane, I have mixed views on his short stay (not as harsh as Adit and Turok but not as flowery as Sports) but I am not gonna pretend he has a squad that is built in accordance to how he sees football (or anyone should see it). One genuine CF to play at this level, one midfielder physical enough to put in sled dog work, no back LB, Ramos, a rapidly declining Pepe, a bunch of ACM's, a transfer ban starring us in the face and the enigmas that is Ronaldo and Bale. Not to mention said ACM's not performing for various reasons and Kroos playing DM.

Maybe he should work with what he has, build his team accordingly and I would agree but I'm not too sure what that build is honestly. Basically, he is not doing badly...

Actually they did give Benzema a choice...  he could have sat it out because you can't force a player to play if he's injured and risks aggravating it unless he agrees.  That's actually one of the labor laws.  Carlo asked him the same thing and he did it for him too.  Only manager he refused to do it for was Mourinho and that's because he treated him like crap.

Benz did it because, as he's said previously, you can't take for granted certain things like the WC, Euro or CL semis/finals.  So if you can play at all and contribute, you play.  He played the CL final injured although he could have missed the WC because he felt it was too big a game to sit out too.

He's a dumbass in life... but he has good football common sense at least.

Totally did not consider the labour laws that govern an employer from having an injured employee on the job. That was my bad. Still, the man really shouldn't have been started though I admire his conviction in wanting to try.

To think I would have been admiring this goat and defending him. Times have changed...

I think the logic behind starting Benz went like this...  Jese doesn't have 90 mins in him so you needed to sub him out.  Since Benz was injured, if you brought him in as a sub, you didn't know if he could got 5 mins or 30 mins... so what would you do if he had replaced Jese already and then got injured?  You had nobody left on the bench to take Benz' place in this scenario.  So the most rational option was to start Benz and have him play as long as he could... and then bring Jese to finish off the game.  

Really crap CF situation we have going if you ask me.  Can't believe we thought not having one proper CF to back up the starter was a good idea...  granted, Barca are in the same Boat  They only have Suarez.

Ronaldo being out only made it completely unmanageable. At least with CR, he could have started at CF and Jese would have backed him up.

If we face atletico we will lose that one. no way we beating them with the way this team is setup.

I can see us beat bayern. Fraudiola is a hipster.

we getting ahead of ourselves though, we got city to take out first.

halamadrid2 wrote:Atleti are predictable when we dont play ultra atacking from the start which is needed in LaLiga because of how fine the margins are for us and Barca between phsycological advantages and always lagging behind. We have played them 3 times in CL and they only scored one lucky goal from a set piece that Iker got wrong. Meh Bayern might be easier but if we dont push all men forward Atleti wont trouble us

The saddest part is that Carlo wasnt wrong in how he went against atletico. We were just unfortunate never to score when the opportunity came. Yes even that 4-0 loss we could have scored 5. this is why I dont complain when we lose to atletico. they always take their chances and we didnt. usually a clean game.

Atletico are stronger now though... Griezmann is a legit threat and we're in need of dire fixes before we can face them again. our midfield being the number 1 problem right now.

Defeat city first. But before you do that, make sure you beat Real Sociedad without getting any key player injured.
An injury to kroos could do us some good though

I hope teams have finally learned how to beat atletico - don't go all out attacking, don't play a high line. Let them have 50% possession and our forward line will do the rest

Bale has 0 CL goals