Ajax v Real Madrid

Lucas and Asensio's final ball is awful. they can't pass the ball to striker. just want to shoot.

poor Benz playing with braindead players like Bale, Lucas and Asensio.

And Modric imo was not bad. yet again it seems we watched different games

In Courtis's defence, he had good saves. on that scene the Ajax player who was 1 meter away from him tried to hit the ball and the mistake was because of that.

They can pass they just choose not to cause they think scoring=starting and headlines, asensio and bale needs sod off back to the bench if they aren't interested in nothing other than goals

This match could've been ugly if Ajax had better finishers. We looked sluggish, which is to be expected with the week we had.

Ramos was amazing, easy motm and shame he'll be missing the 2nd leg.
Nacho was really poor, has been poor all season imo.
Why is Lucas so dumb? loses the ball trying to draw a soft foul which leads to us conceding. Then he has off ball incident with De Jong which could've well ruled out the 2nd goal.
Good goal and cameo from Asensio, hopefully he can step up and take the RW spot.

We being bad aside, Ajax played great. very intense.


player ratings imo :

Courtis : 7 ( despite the mistake, which was 50% his fault, he was solid. saved a clear one on one too. )
Reguilon : 6 ( played with heart. made mistakes but he is young. hope he learns from it. some great moves forward but poor finish.)
Ramos : 10 ( absolute brilliant. men among boys.)
Nacho 5.5 ( not good imo. he was slow and poor in battles. he is off form )
Carvajal : 6 ( very bad first half but good in second. brilliant assist too )
Case : 6
Kroos : 6
Modric 6.5 ( very good on the ball but his age is showing. lost most of his battles. )
Vini : 7.5 ( simply because of that move on the goal. still learning )
Bale : 2 ( garbage yet again )
Benzema : 7.5 ( didn't see the ball much but did what he had to do. great shot )

Lucas : 6
Asensio : 6.5
Mariano : 6 ( he is a good runner! )

@Zees What the point of asensio or bale if they aren't gonna help in build up play, not gonna pass to cf benzema or Mariano or provide any hold up play, just shooting nothing but shooting.

Zees wrote:
Ramos was amazing, easy motm and shame he'll be missing the 2nd leg.

he did that on purpose

Kroos and Casemiro struggle a lot with man press.

I feel like I have seen this game often vs napoli, Bayern, etc... All those possession teams

chad4401 wrote:@Zees What the point of asensio or bale if they aren't gonna help in build up play, not gonna pass to cf benzema or Mariano or provide any hold up play, just shooting nothing but shooting.

Asensio was injured for a long time and hasn't found his rhythm yet, he has shown in the past he can do that.

Yes he has been poor this season but so was just about everyone else under Lope and he has been injured under Solari. He was one of the most hyped up prospects for a reason and is still only 23.

halamadrid2 wrote:I think the Ramos yellow was deliberate. 89th min after we go 2-1 up, far away from our goal. I am sure we all rather he misses the 2nd leg than the first leg of the quarters.

Mamad wrote:

Zees wrote:
Ramos was amazing, easy motm and shame he'll be missing the 2nd leg.

he did that on purpose

Yeah you're right, he admitted to it in the post match interview. He has to know uefa punishes players for intentional yellows right? why would you admit to it in public lmao.

My point is asensio is not interested in getting the win, he just wants to score that the attitude that started the goal drought, if everybody wants to score nobody scores that an easy pass into Mariano, where the game is 1-1 less than 10 mins why would shoot it when 3 defenders are in front of you? The same thing isco, ceballos, reguillon etc, they are not goal scorers they are just role players and It's those stupid plays why this team can't win la liga, too much bad decision making and selfishness, if selling everyone can get that mentality out of the team then I'm all for it.

This is why I was never a fan of goal counting when cr was in the team, cause he would spend 90% of the game just making bad decisions and scoring then its all good, players like asensio and isco are more interested in flukey goals when the team is losing and cf is open just pass the freaking ball this team is so backwards, who do you want scoring the guy with 19 goals are the players with 2-5 goals, benzema still gets the same service with no cr in the team , poor Mariano asensio will never pass to him and fans will say he is not good enough.

More importantly, why would you intentionally get a yellow when we have a 2nd leg to play? After a MOTM performance Ramos put down, he delightfully reminds me he is, in fact, Ramos. I love him, also hate him.

Asensio deserves praise as well. He was fantastic when he came in. I hope he continues to perform consistently

Perucho21 wrote:Asensio deserves praise as well. He was fantastic when he came in. I hope he continues to perform consistently

Alvaro Morata had some fantastic performances, both for us and for Juve as a bit part performer, as well. What does he and Asensio have in common? A consistent failure to deliver when they have an opportunity to show that they are ready to face the responsibility of being considered part of the starting eleven. I genuinely want to have faith in Asensio, but the moment he starts demanding to become a first team regular without having proven himself responsible enough to share the burden of having to perform sufficiently well for 90 minutes together with our other starters - he becomes an issue.

I don't know Morata or Asensio personally, so I can't confirm how their respective mentalities work, but from what I can tell, neither of them seem to have the drive that's required of a first teamer that consistently fights for trophies. This would be somewhat understandable if they were distinguished veterans who struggle to motivate themselves when there are no new goals to be made, but they're both relatively young players who might never be capable of showing the ambition that people expect of them.

Doc wrote:More importantly, why would you intentionally get a yellow when we have a 2nd leg to play? After a MOTM performance Ramos put down, he delightfully reminds me he is, in fact, Ramos. I love him, also hate him.

He probably wouldn't have if we had been losing. My guess is once the technical staff felt confident enough to go into the second leg without Ramos, they must have sent some form of message for him to go ahead and do it.

Hmm, sure but I wonder if the technical staff (assuming that story is true) was watching the match? I don't think Ajax would be playing any different in the 2nd leg. Basically, it was such a weird decision but we won so it worked out.

AFAIK Vini - Benz is the best Brazilian-French duo in Europe

Curtois - 7

Some very crucial saves to keep us in the game. A very big blunder which luckily ruled out for offside.

Carvajal-6 only because he assisted. He was utterly terrible on the ball. Basic passing and controls were missing.

Nacho- 5 .could not deal with the pressure and kept giving the ball away.

Ramos-7.5. terrible on the ball and none of the passes hit the target. How ever very crucial sweeping job.

Regullion-6.defended well but was bad on the ball. Basic passing failed him.

Casemiro- 5.5. was caught ball watching for the one on one save curtois did. He should have tracked the man making run on left side of the box. Couple of good interception but largely inefficient on the ball and at times contributed in crowding. Went forward as AM to bypass the pressing only to get dispossessed there also. He was positionally awful which is why he had to go for heroic last ditch tackles. Kudos to him for getting them right.

Kroos- 5.5.couldn't get out of the press I'm the first half and didn't demand the ball enough. Improved in the second half but still laregely ineffective on both ends.

Modric-6- Uncharerestic passing in the first half . K
Showed flashes of brilliance and press resistance but lacked consistency. Did his part in the first goal with a pass to regullion.

Vinicius-7- was a proper threat . He drifts in an out of game alot. Superb defensive contribution.Made the first goal by eliminating 3 defenders.

Benzema-6- Scored the goal but apart from that huge failure in providing outlet to midfielders and defenders . The was Ajax CF won ALL the aerial ball and Benzema who won none was literally game changing difference. If you can't win the aerial duals then you should drop deep and control the ground passes..Benzema failed there also..

Bale-5- Nice tracking back but apart from that very bad team work. Provided nothing all game.

Vasquez-5 - Gave away the goal and did nothing all game . Need a right wing player so badly.

Asensio-6.5 -was fantastic when he came on. Capped off with a goal.

Reguilon passed the ball to Vini for the goal. very good. but he did it once. every time Vini made a run they didn't see him or was afraid to pass or chose not to. especially Regui. should work on that.

and lol at people comparing Vini's speed to Robinho. he is way faster and has waaaaay more acceleration. he moves faster with ball too.

Lmao, oh Ramos. He knew exactly what he was doing.

halamadrid2 wrote:Speaking of Nacho how in the hell was he losing the headers to freaking Tadic over and over and over

Tadic won all the hoof ball Ajax directed at him. It was unbelievable how the same tactics worked 2356865 times in a match. Hoof it to tadic, he chests it down to a player and take it from there. Not only Nacho Ramos also failed to intercept hoofballs.

This is why I don't like small defenders. You need to bully strikers with size, Nacho can't do that