CORRECTION: Wednesday Bullets
By: Steve | August 22nd, 2007Real Madrid news from today’s football headlines… (Day of the week corrected in the title above)
- Former manager Fabio Capello has finally vented against Real Madrid directors.
Claiming that they lied about retaining him and his assistants before the end of the season, Capello also says the decision to bench David Beckham came from them first and he went along as the club’s manager. It doesn’t surprise me in the least. Capello was drafted in by president Ramon Calderon to win something, anything, which he did despite the incompetency of Calderon and sporting director Predrag Mijatovic, and all he got in return was a swift kick out the door. It also confirms what I said earlier about Capello having to fall on his directors’ sword regarding Becks.
- Holding midfielder Emerson has been sold to AC Milan, for a rumoured 5m euros.
Though this hasn’t been officially confirmed, if true, it would represent a massive loss of 11m euros in just one year since the Brazilian international’s move from Juventus in 2006. While he had a disastrous start to last year’s campaign, he did regain his top form in the second half of the season, playing a big role in Los Blancos’ title win. He was still second to Mahamadou Diarra as first-choice holding midfielder though, and with more youth teamers aboard, it’s obvious he wasn’t really involved in Bernd Schuster’s plans. The only question then is, did we sell too cheaply, or did we buy him for too much last year?
- Chelsea winger Arjen Robben’s father still claims that a move to Madrid will happen.
If it does happen, I hope it happens soon. This charade has gone on long enough. It does make sense for Chelsea to sell the Dutchman. He’s fallen to second-choice left winger after Florent Malouda, and by getting some money upfront for him, they could increase their offer for Sevilla’s Daniel Alves, who could plug the hole at rightback and allow Michael Essien to play his natural midfield position. I’m shocked this hasn’t been done yet.
- Here’s a couple reasons why I don’t really trust Goal.com:
Real is apparently dangling Julio Baptista or Roberto Soldado in an effort to obtain Diego Milito from Real Zaragoza. Really? Milito? Why is Soldado not getting a fair chance to play here? It boggles the mind.
The other news is that Los Merengues have made a move for Manchester United leftback Gabriel Heinze. This would relegate Marcelo to a bench position, when he should be playing full-time to develop, so he should really be loaned out somewhere. This would also mean Miguel Torres is now further down the pecking order, but since he’s not a natural leftback, that only puts him maybe 4th on the list at rightback, behind Sergio Ramos, Michel Salgado and Cicinho. This also means that Real intend to play Royston Drenthe further up the pitch to reduce his defensive duties. But I’ll believe it when I see it in more reputable sources.
Category: 
Tags: AC Milan, Arjen Robben, Chelsea, Cicinho, Diego Milito, Editorial-Opinion, Emerson, Fabio Capello, Gabriel Heinze, Julio Baptista, Manchester United, Michel Salgado, Miguel Torres, Predrag Mijatovic, Ramon Calderon, Real Zaragoza, Roberto Soldado, Royston Drenthe, Sergio Ramos, Team NewsSubscribe
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Steve, hold the fort down for me for atleast another few days, im real busy with moving all the kids in this week. Thanks
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United States
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Actualy, I really like the idea of getting a serious defensive left back. If we got Heinze, I might advocate ushering Torres to the top of the right back pecking order - he’s been one of the few consistant elements to Madrid’s spotty defense, and the kid’s got spirit.
Clearly Ramos woud be the first choice, but given how miserably our Center Backs have been performing, and the fact that Ramos was one of the few that was able to overcome the Madrid Center’s Curse, Madrid might do best to bring him back inside. This would be a shame, because I was giddy with excitement when we stocked up the middle, freeing Ramos to play attacking fullback - but it hasn’t really been working yet. It would also be a shame to have spent all that money on the center just to stock the bench. But there would be a fair amount of rotation with that set-up. And of course Drenthe would push up to the midfield where I feel he belongs (I really don’t see him as a back).
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You guys did sign Heinze. Which is great, cause now your defense sucks even more.
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United States -
Heinze and Robben!!!! where does this leave Torres and Marcelo? Cerainly Drenthe position is further up after Heinze’s signing. Though I do like Robben and Heinze, I don’t know if these are intelligent signings. With both Drenthe and Robben with us means no more Robinho on the left! woo hoo!
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For the most part, I’m very pleased with the signings! Madrid finally has a left side! But I’m actually not sure where Drenthe will fit in now. Heinze will be the starting back, and I assume Robben gets the starting left wing. Where does Drenthe go, then? Currently, our roster is choking with midfielders: Guti, Diarra, Sneijder, De la Red, Baptista, and Gago. So will Drenthe make the starting 11?
There’s bound to be some real competition for the starting roles, and right now my greatest fear is how this might effect Guti’s future - especially with Tottenham and Man City knocking at the door. I would be so incredibly sad to see our segundo capitan go! I’d rather see him stay, and Drenthe play left wing, than to acquire Robben.
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Greetings! (Put down the flame-thrower, I come in peace.)
I’m just curious what you think about Real’s current squad size, given all the new signings. Will there need to be more players shipped out?
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Where the heck do you put Drenthe, now that you have Robben?? That is a very interesting question. I say you change to a 4-3-3 formation, what do you guys think? Stop the Italian Style defensively stacked formation that Capello brought in, take Diarra out or whoever else is in that defending midfield position and add an extra striker. Casillas - Heinze,Cannavarro,Pepe/Metzelder,Ramos - Drenthe,Guti,Sneijder - Robben,Van,Robinho. Honestly, I don’t think the team will suffer as a result of having one less defender. Real would be so powerful up front that I believe that would actually create huge advantages for them on opponents failed counter attacks, in other words counter-counter attacks for Real would be extremely dangerous. You would have to ask Sneijder and Drenthe to cover more ground and participate more on defense, but they are Dutch, their used to that, right? It would also make the pace of matches very fast and powerful, which if anyone has the bench for it it’s Real. That is what the fans want, no, when they say they want attractive play on top of wins? The fact is that Real doesn’t have creative geniuses like Ronaldinho, Messi or Henri, but if they can hone down on their technic (and they have world quality players to do that) they should be able to play very fast, asfixiating football, with very powerful strikes from all sides and distances, and roll over any team they play. I for one would love to see that kind of football.
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Dear Schuster, please please please listen to elmeromero. Please fall for that trap. Please remove any sort of defensive-minded front 6 and clutter the center of your attacking half to the point where a Manhattan traffic jam would seem like an open highway. Pleeeeeease do it.
A midfield of Drenthe, Guti, and Sneijder would be the absolutely greatest gift to a Barca fan I can think of. Imagine one of those three being the least bit affective as a central midfielder in defense…haha, that makes me chuckle, especially since Heinze’s job description at ManU and on the Argentina squad seems to have been “find the worst position possible to stand in and stand there, then let your technical skill make up for some of that. And be scruffy.”
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Hey asshole, I put the topic up for debate. I had an opinion but also asked what other readers thought and what their opinion was. What I don’t remember doing was asking for a bitchy reply which lacked any form of intelligent reasoning. This blog has relatively low traffic compared to other sports blogs and I was trying to get some intelligent debate going on about the team that I think most of us follow passionately, which unfortunately is hard to find on the internet for some reason. All you offer is crap commentary based on what? How about you offer an intelligent explanation and provide some insight on how to best utilize the players and get them playing good football again so that I can take you seriously.
For the record, my initial position may still be wrong, but if you are going to shit on it at the very least provide some well thought out logic, instead of childish insults about how scruffy or whatever one of our players looks.
Also for the record, you are saying that Barca would walk all over Real with that lineup, but interestingly enough Barca isn’t stacking their defense with useless defending midfielders either. So how the hell do you see that happening?
It sounds to me like you just think Reals line up sucks and Barca’s is better. They get one player, Henri which they add to a second place team I might add, and all of the sudden they are some unstoppable force, and other teams shouldnt even attempt to play similar attacking football, we need to panic and add extra defenders? Bullshit, but ok, let’s here some intelligent thoughts Isaiah.Posted from
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Huzzah elmeromero!! But don’t mind Isaiah, he writes the Barfa post and just loves to instigate - and yes, as with most Barcelona fans, his opinions usually lack intelligence and reason. The rest of us greatly appreciate your comments, please keep them coming.
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Right, because I said that Real should start 10 DMs and Cannavaro. That’s exactly what I said.
Oh wait. No, that’s not what I said at all.
What I said was that having no defensively minded players in front of your central midfield has proven to be an ineffective way for Real Madrid to win games. Diarra needs to start if RM are going to have a shot at winning games, a fact that I think is clear from how well the team defended as a unit against Sevilla: trash.
I’m not here saying “Barcelona is the greatest team ever,” what I said was, “please start a shitty lineup so that you lose a lot,” which was a light way of saying “I disagree.” Take that as you wish, I could care less.
As for your question of who I think should start, go ahead and read the other posts I’ve made on that front. Your suggestions were, in my opinion, based on a concept of football that doesn’t make sense in the wider La Liga perspective. Taken at face value, I too would dislodge the defensive midfielder (works in FIFA 07!) but it doesn’t work in La Liga. I’m not sure it works anywhere, really, but I’ve got the most knowledge about Spain, so I make that comment based on that. Feel free to disagree, I don’t care, but if you’re asking for exclusively “reasoned arguments”, you forget that levity is a good tool for making a sport more accessible to the wider world. (there was nothing bitchy about my reply. I actually did chuckle when I read your post, which you can take as snide, snotty, whatever, it wasn’t directed at you and that’s that.)
As for Barce, well, Barca has a better squad than RM in terms of chemistry and that can’t really be questioned. And “second-place” means nothing as it’s a new season. And if you want to bring up the question of who was the better team last year and deserved to win the league, go ahead and read the discussions that we had on this blog at the end of the year. You’ll find that it was a pretty comprehensive discussion that boils down to the fact that the league rules are the league rules and that it seems FCB fans dislike them and RM fans don’t. I can only assume that I’d be the odd man out as a cule if the roles were reversed because I have stated that I think FCB was the better team based on other categories which are more significant in showing season-long ability, which is the point of not having a playoff.
Would I start the Barcelona XI as the World Best XI? Hell no. Only a couple players at most would make it, but the same goes for RM. You can’t tell me that in this coming year, you would take all of RM over all of Barca. Maybe you think Heinze is better than Abidal, fine, but I disagree (oh and he IS scruffy like 90% of the time, which isn’t anything bad cause I am personally scruffy 100% of the time). Cannavaro on his day is the best defender in La Liga, in my opinion, but his day comes and goes; Sergio Ramos is pretty high up there too; the problem those two seem to have is that everyone else around them is very hither-thither went it comes to defending. I do think Heinze’s addition will make their jobs easier, but I also really think Heinze isn’t up to the RM standard as a defender. He’s pretty second-tier, in my opinion, which is underscored by the fact that he didn’t play all that well at all in the Copa America for Argentina (a couple of the goals were directly his fault). Gabi Milito was also at fault for a few of the goals, but he doesn’t rank as a great defender, in my opinion. He’s merely solid, which is what one needs in that central role next to the commander (in FCB’s case it’s Puyol — a good worker, endeared to cule hearts, but not that great in terms of technical ability — in RM’s it’s Cannavaro). It’s just that Milito already knows something about La Liga whereas Heinze hasn’t been there since 2001.
In attack Ronnie is better than anyone RM has in that particular position. I think that’s got to be accepted at this point. I generally think of Robinho and Messi as comparable in skill; Eto’o, Henry, and RVN are neck-and-neck though Eto’o has been off his game lately and I might have to reevaluate that soon; Robben will try to play where Ronnie plays and isn’t as good, though better at the defensive stuff; Zambrotta is better for the time being than Miguel Torres and not as good as Sergio Ramos who may or may not play on the right; Toure is not a known quantity to me at this point as he’s unproven in league play, so the RM has the advantage there with Diarra whose upside is potentially fantastic; Guti when he’s on is hands down better than Iniesta, but Iniesta is more consistent and seems to have better on-field communication with his teammates, Sneijder I think has the potential to replace Guti and be more consistent (depends on Schuster’s schemes), but isn’t better than Deco, who is still world class whereas Sneijder I want to watch play before I truly judge him; Gago has no comparison in Barca, I don’t think, and Xavi has no real comparison on RM.
Gio Dos Santos and Bojan are great additions to any squad and so I think the young guns of Barcelona are better than those of RM, but Higuain has massive potential, as do Balboa and Drenthe. Also, Barca’s youth system seems to spit out offensive players really well, but not defensive players. RM gets both, I think. I know I’m forgetting lots of people, but I have a train to catch, so you can respond however you’d like to that. Or not at all. Doesn’t matter.
I still say your formation would be beaten by Barcelona as it stands today, but we’ll see in December whether or not I’m right. The games are always good, that’s for sure.
Oh Rijkaard is a better coach than Schuster. So far, that’s true based on what they’ve won, though Schuster did very well with very little at Getafe.
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Oh and you’re the asshole cause you like Real Madrid.
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haha. Thats great. Honestly Isiah, I think you made a good comparison of both teams. As a Real fan I would still say that when we play, Barca will be the favorite, but Real is no team to be discarded just because they had a bad pre-season with an incomplete team. Barca has more experience playing together, especially for the type of quick, creative football they play that takes full seasons to coordinate properly, which will make them a hard team to beat. The Fantistic four are going to be very fun to watch this year, and as a Mexican, there is very little that would bring more joy to me than to watch Gio Dos Santos have a breakout year (Believe me I will be torn when he is on the field). But back to the original topic, I think Real’s and Barca’s mid and back field are similar, they play similar formations at least, which is why I found it hard to take that you would not give Real’s defense the credit that it deserves, and instead belittled my suggestion of adding an additional attacker in place of a defensive midfielder. I don’t believe that Real needs Diarra to act as a defensive reinforcement any more than Barca needs a player of the sort. The truth as I see it, is that when you have so much attacking power, opposing teams are forced to respect that before they mount a counter attack. I know what you are going say, “you mean you expect Real’s defense to actually be able to defend BETTER with one less man, after the poor performance of the the pre-season and the way they got worked in the SuperCopa.” Yes. I think that Real’s defense was actually hurt more by Diarra’s presence, and possibly even outnumbered on opposing counterattacks. His lack of offensive creativity, or at the very least offensive competence, made it harder for Real’s midfield to get anything going and a lot safer for a team like Sevilla to mount a counter attack, and, made them more willing to risk the repercussions. I believe the presence of Robben, for example, would have kept Dani Alves a lot more honest and closer to home. And that in the event of a counter attack being detained, Sevilla for example would have been in for a lot of trouble with all that additional firepower Real would have brought. Then again, Schuster still has to stop making such serious mistakes(eg. Starting Raul and managing all the egos) and has to learn how to coach very soon or else he is out, but that is a whole other topic.
As much as I hate Calderon, and distrust Schuster, I actually think this lineup might actually work, and it might actually create a very powerful, technically impressive team to watch…maybe even more than Barca or Sevilla, in a different way of course. Heinze, for as scruffy as he looks, and he does, is a solid defender, used to playing on strong, confident teams, and as much as I like the potential that Torres brings, Heinze will actually solidify that post. This is a good team, one that should not be discarded. Actually, after giving the formation I suggested thought, you might actually be right, you might need 4 mid-fielders, maybe you have to drop Robben down, honestly I don’t know. It would be nice to have a Javier Macherano type placer that can enforce the midfield and still bring the attack, I wish Diarra, Emerson, Gago, etc.. could fill that role, but there are few like that that can. Certainly Barca doesn’t have one either. Real’s problem is that their players aren’t versatile enough, on top of that you have no real “10″. Guti is a big baby with no leadership qualities, but until Sneijder or someone else can step up, you have no choice put to play him. I personally think Sneijder playing out of center, playing more like Beckham, might waste his potential, but where else do you put him and still utilize as much of the teams talent as possible. That’s all I am saying. This team is good, but I can’t seem to make it fit right. But as for their talent, you can’t deny that. And as for their need to bench Diarra and Raul, you can’t deny that either.
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