Of Mousetraps and Ketchup Bottles

I don’t get it.

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Racing and Levante did it EXACTLY the same
way. Wait for Madrid
in your own half. Defend deep. Frustrate them. And with a bit of cleverness and
luck, through a quick counter, or a set piece: you just might nick that goal
that gives you a point – or 3.

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Espanyol instead, chose to do it EXACTLY
the same way as Ajax
and Rayo. Control the ball, caress it. Ping it about: show Real Madrid who’s in
control. And within a matter of seconds: Kaka, Ronaldo and Ozil WILL murder
you.

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Why did Espanyol choose to try to be Ajax or Rayo rather than
Levante or Racing? I have no idea. I don’t get it. I only know that I enjoyed
myself quite a bit watching it all unfold.

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Real Madrid is the world’s best, most
fabulously-designed, attractive-to-watch, extravagant and ridiculously-expensive
footballing equivalent to the mousetrap. Cross a line enough times and in mere
split second, SNAP! You’re dead. Last night’s game at the Cornelia El Prat
wasn’t much different. Madrid didn’t really boss the game: the tried, but
couldn’t manage to. Espanyol did a good job of gaining control of the game:
enabling them to cross the line, that
line more than a few times… and they duly got punished for it. 4 goals. 4
daggers. Thank You and Good Night. Thanks for having us over.

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Team
Selection

Jose Mourinho seems to be playing games
with all of us with his team selection. After not picking Albiol for a few key games
where first-choice centerbacks (Pepe + Carvalho) are unavailable. Varane instead
got the nod to start much to the surprise of many.    This of course got the conspiracy theorists
a buzz.  Maybe they were on to something…or maybe Mourinho just had some form of squad
rotation system in his mind that none of us at this point can understand.  The other surprise of the night was also
Sergio Ramos starting at CB with Arbeloa playing at RB given Varane’s
performances during the last few game. The midfield was also a bit of a
mystery: with Lass starting ahead of Khedira despite the German’s
availability. 

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The choices were pretty much obvious
upfront given Di Maria’s suspension. 
Despite the sentimental speculation that Vanilla Joe (Jose Callejon)
would get the starting nod due to his history as an ex-Espanyol player, Jose
Mourinho opted to further entertain the media with the Kaka-Ozil
partnership.   Ditto for Ronaldo and
Pipita – Benzema was after all injured.

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Player
Performances

The defense did reasonably well.  One could complain that we missed Carvalho’s
passing capabilities from defense.  But
then again, if you don’t have control of the game, what do you need a
ball-playing CB for?  I’ve always said
that Arbeloa for Ramos at RB in Mourinho’s system (where there is less
attacking on the right side) represents no drop in quality for Real
Madrid.  And as for Ramos, I belong to
the school of thinking that he is a far more suitable CB than he is an RB. 

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Meanwhile at midfield, once again, the Xabi
Alonso + Lass partnership fails to control the midfield.  AS’ passing stats this morning showed decent
numbers for Lass, but I’m not inclined to only look at the numbers.  What remains critical however, was Xabi Alonso’s
ability to pick out the right passes with a single touch to his teammates the
moment some form of control of the ball was gained. 

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The key plot line of last night’s story
however, was how Madrid happily allowed control of the ball and the game go to
Espanyol and were equally happy to get just those few chances in the game.  Nothing personified this more than our
opening goal where a single touch from Kaka puts Ronaldo on his way to feeding
Pipita for the opening goal.  Many have
spoken about how we managed to tear Ajax open in a matter of mere seconds
mid-week.  I’m pretty sure however, that
if we were to measure the amount of time it took Kaka to ping that ball to
Ronaldo all the way up to the goal scored by Higuain, that you might find the
time it took to score the goal comparable to the one we scored versus Ajax
mid-week.

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The
Ketchup Bottle Breaks

Welcome Back Pipita!

How fitting is it that this also happens to
be the weekend where Ruud van Nistelrooy finally manages to score for Malaga:
he of the now-famous ketchup bottle metaphor. If we were to conclude that by
scoring his first La Liga goal for Malaga, RVN has finally managed to open his
“ketchup bottle,” then I suppose  Pipita
has managed to smash his.  All three of
Higuain’s goals were full demonstration of a shockingly improved level of
fitness and confidence.  After all, it
wasn’t too long ago where we saw him run the entire length of the pitch to find
himself one-on-one with the goalkeeper, only to blast it WAAAAY out.  The opening goal fed to him by Ronaldo was
taken with 2 touches of the ball and aimed at the top corner: none of that
fire-it-at-the-goalkeeper crap that we all know we usually see from a non-match-fit
Higuain.  Kudos would also have to go to
Alvaro Arbeloa for attempting and succeeding a very successful Xabi Alonso
impression: delivering a long vertical raking pass that travelled almost
three-quarters of the pitch to find Pipita for his and Real Madrid’s
second.    And since we started this
discussion on strikers talking about RVN, what poetic justice it was to see
Pipita imitating his mentor, using his predatory striker’s instincts to
capitalize on Espanyol’s defending error to earn the right to keep the game
ball last night.

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Perhaps the other surprise of last night
was that we did not see Cristiano Ronaldo attempt a bicycle kick especially
after we saw Julio Baptista knock a beautiful one in last Saturday.  Instead, we saw him deliver two fabulous
assists including Vanilla Joe’s first goal as a Real Madrid player in La Liga.  Callejon’s decision to not celebrate the goal
and gesture to the crowd to ask for forgiveness was also a touching detail.

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Outside of Barca’s continued dominance of
La Liga (once again they are top of the table), I find that this La Liga season
thus far has been about ex-Real Madrid strikers: Negredo and Soldado leading
their teams with their goal-scoring exploits for Sevilla and Valencia,
respectively as well as RVN + Baptista’s exploits last Saturday.  Last night, I just had to wonder whether post-Levante
+ Racing, would Real Madrid’s current strikers follow suit?

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Three goals from Pipita + one goal from
Callejon with no discussions regarding Kaka + Ozil + Xabi later, we have a
broken ketchup bottle for an answer to that simple question.

Sleepwalking Too Rarly and Sleep-Waking Too Late

No, Real Madrid
is NOT in Crisis. We are merely in a slump. 5 dropped points over 2 games
against La Liga teams whose objective is to stave off relegation is proof of
that. Maybe Jose Mourinho’s sarcastic remarks prior to the Levante game about
just wanting to stay up were taken seriously by the team: prompting them to
play as if we were a team battling relegation.

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On a more
serious note: I can only speculate that perhaps the team is tired. The team did
have an intensive preseason and looked supremely fit for the Super Copa and the
opening of La Liga. Since the international break however, the team has looked
flat, out of ideas and mentally and physically tired. Is this a case of the
team peaking at the wrong time? Or maybe Mourinho’s fitness regimen really
designed things this way given the lack of top-level opposition at this point
in time in our calendar? (But he didn’t anticipate we’d be bad enough to drop
points)

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Team Selection

On the back of
my hypothesis that the team might be mentally and physically fatigued, I will
not criticize the rotations instituted by Mourinho for last night’s game.
Vanilla Joe (Callejon) did indeed deserve a start while Di Maria clearly
deserved some form of punishment for demonstrating his credentials to join
Argentina’s Diving Team for the London 2012 games. Arbeloa’s entry into the
starting XI is also logical to me – as I’ve always pined for him to start.
Ramos going to the bench might have been a bit curious, but I’m willing to
chalk it up to rotation: after all, it would be 7 games of football every 3
days for the boys (Getafe-Zagreb-Levante-Racing-Rayo-Ajax-Espanyol). It was
however the decision to start Varane as opposed to Albiol to be Carvalho’s
partner that gave credence to the internal Portuguese-vs.-Spanish clique warthat some reporters / conspiracy theorists have been abuzz about. At midfield, the selection of Lass also seemed to be the logical choice
given Khedira’s suspension and Coentrao + Pepe’s injuries.

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Having said the
above, let me be the first to say that in my opinion, Varane had a good game
and found his performance to be shockingly impressive for a teenager who was playing
in the reserves of a relegation-battling Ligue 1 team at this same time last
season. My clamors to see Arbeloa start were also rightly justified as well.
All in all, I thought we did well in the defensive department. Even the
recently-oft-criticized Carvalho wasn’t bad – nevermind Iker Casillas who had a
signature reflexes were on show for all of us last night. And speaking of the
Captain, I would also like to point out that his ball distribution out of his
penalty box has improved immensely as we have seen his tendency to make
pointless hoofing kicks out of his box less and less and more intelligent
throws to streaking players to start plays instead.

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Sadly, that’s
about as positive as I can get re: what I have to say from last night’s
performances.

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The First Half – Sleepwalking

Our first half
performance could essentially be described as the Team Sleepwalking. The team
was sluggish, unimaginative and lacking in assertion to seize control of the
game and take the game to Racing Santander. Every Real Madrid supported on
twitter also pretty much noticed how little the off-the-ball movement was from
Real’s players: an ultimate sign of ‘Sleepwalking.’

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And apart from
being a big bleh in terms of performance, Real Madrid played a very unusual
game tactically in the first half  as
well. Mesut Ozil, was frequenoziltly on the flanks while Ronaldo would be in the
‘10’ position – it is a positional arrangement that benefits / maximizes the
capabilities of neither Cristiano nor Ozil.

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Apart from the
already-mentioned positive performances from Arbeloa + Varane, perhaps only
Xabi Alonso deserves a mention. His midfield partner Lass however did try… to
match Xabi’s passing numbers… but in fouls (uff!). This game was no longer just
about the popular criticism of Real Madrid for not finishing their chances
created – because in the first half there were hardly any scoring chances
created by our Men in Black-and-White.

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Real Madrid did
find some measure of control of the game late in the first half, but there
would be no goal… or even good scoring opportunities created.

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The Second Half – Waking From Sleep Too Late.

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Mourinho did try
to change things up for Real Madrid: initiating 2 bold moves meant to intensify
Real Madrid’s attack on the Racing goal. His first move was to convert his
4-2-3-1 into a more conventional 4-4-2 with Pipita coming on to join Benzema in
attack in place of Ozil. The switch to a classic 4-4-2 also involved placing
Ronaldo and Di Maria (who had come on for Callejon) in the Right and Left side
of the midfield respectivel while Xabi Alonso and Lass remained as the pivots
of the match.

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The second
tactical change Mourinho put late in the second half was the conversion of this
4-4-2 into a diamond 4-4-2 with a single pivot (not the narrow CM-centric
version you see in Serie A nowadays): with Xabi Alonso playing the single pivot
at the base of the diamond while Kaka, who came on for Lass played at the tip
of the diamond. Once again, I thought Kaka looked bright but still lacking in
the ‘final product’ for Real Madrid that it so badly needed but never managed
to get in the game.

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The Truly Worrisome Thing

On the back of
what was visibly an improvement in terms of the team’s performance, I
personally cannot find fault with the IN-GAME adjustments Mourinho made to his
team to get the win – because both ‘degrees’ of tactical modification appeared
to me like they worked in terms of tightening the screw around the neck of
Racing. The truly worrisome thing about was that at the end of the day, the
ultimate objective of scoring a winning goal (nevermind creating adequate
scoring chances), was not achieved. All the signs are now clearly pointing
towards the possibility that Real Madrid have in fact had a massive drop in
terms mental and physical fitness.

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3 Games. 1 Win,
1 Loss, 1 Draw. 1 Goal Scored. These are definitely not the numbers of a
title-contending team. At this point, then perhaps only  the comfort / consolation we can get from
last night was Barca’s lost points (we have Unai Emery to thank for that).

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Injuries and Experiments

Rayo Vallecano
visit us at the Bernabeu this weekend and it’s looking like Ricardo Carvalho
will not be available amidst reports that he may not want to make the match
because of a head injury. With a slew of other injuries and a lengthening list
of players whose forms are dropping off, Perhaps Mourinho should re-think the
tactical options available to him as his 3 options of varying tactical systems
all failed to secure us the win.

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Maybe Jose
should give a couple of other tactical systems a try too…

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A voice inside
of me at this time however is just offering up a much simpler solution: That
the team stops Sleep Walking and instead Wakes from their Sleep.