CL Final: Undecima, here we come!

Marcelo is wonderful. When players get pressed they pass the ball to him because they know that he will bail them out effortlessly. Also he makes it look so easy how he dribbles past players until he gets to the opposition box after that he makes the wrong choice 7/10 times. If he can get that sorted the assists will rain down like hail. He is half this team's attack and it shows when he doesnt play. If Casemiro continues to help him defensively you wont notice his poor defending. Best LB in the world and arguably just as good as RC in his own right IMO

Lol the only team Alaba will upgrade in Madrid is Rayo. Both RM and AM have better LBs than him

i'm okay with marcelo, we need a back up though, he has issues with injuries. his final ball and crosses are crap. i'm not going to get much into the marcelo/roberto carlos thing, you think he's as good as or better than lizarazu, ashley cole, andres brehme or zanetti? cos that's the implication if you put him on par with rc. that's all i'll say on that.

in fairness to him, he's improved from the marcelo of old who was getting schooled by renato and jesus navas. his final ball and positioning need to improve though. and for whatever reason, we're seeing less of the dangerous combinations him and cristiano used to produce down the left......oh well, at least we won the ucl. i expected him to miss his pk, lol i wasn't confident with any of our takers except for bale and cron

Agreed, but I like how he cuts in alot because defenders cant deal with him then as opposed to being stuck on the wing putting in crosses every single time. He is like our least predictable player, you literally dont know what he will do most of the times.

@futbol_bill wrote:@Tito, re PKs, you obviously had not seen Olbak against PSV! I knew the minute the PK were coming that our guys will just carefully place them all in the lower corner. That guy is horrific at PKs. So so predictable and even when he moves it is late and a high dive, leaving the lower corner exposed. The only one I was concerned about was Ramos taking another straight at centre again. But it was obvious, Zidane and co had done their homework and they executed it to prefection.

i saw the psv game, but i was looking at the pks from a different lens. i was thinking that they had more recent experience with pks so their takers should be comfortable, i totally forgot about the goalie. and i hadn't seen most of our guys take pks ever or in a while. i just remember most of atletis psv pks as being well hit

soon we'll say something like "marcelo is the greatest lb ever". he's good for this team, but let's relax. at madrid we get too caught up in giving crowns too early. sorry marcelo wasn't a better passer, crosser nor link up player than carlos...NOT by a long shot, and carlos also had a better weaker foot than marcelo. the combinations he made down the left with zidane, raul et al were epic. this is damn near blasphemous. are we all going to permit this? i don't want to believe many are too young to have seen carlos in his prime to base his career solely on 1 freekick or 1 outside shot....you've practically said marcelo's one of the best left backs ever, which is highly far fetched. offensively and defensively rc still has him beat. and overall as a lb he's not as good as those other oldies i mentioned

that marcelo response wasn't to you (btw david luiz was also a big reason for brazil's poor showing, i don't think silva played in that calamity against germany) i seriously didn't even notice olbak's lack of mobility, not against psv and not against us, until people who were obviously sick to their stomach that madrid won, started pointing it out. i was so nervous throughout the whole shootout i didn't process what olbak was doing at all. during PKs i tend to focus more on the shooters than the goalies, i take it a goalie will just choose to dive anywhere regardless. only time i ever focused on the goalie was when dudek was doing those hilarious dances in istanbul