Comments on: Game Blog: Real Madrid at Zenit St Petersburg

By: realrock

realrock — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:11:35 +0000

btw , any1 in mumbai , india ?? i am in india for the next few months.

By: realrock

realrock — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:10:55 +0000

well i for one am happy that we got all three points coz in the end thats all that matters.ofcourse i would love that we score 5 goals and outplay the opponents completely in every game but then that ain’t always possible.wats d better team?? the one that has 15 tries and no goals or the one that scores with its single real chance ??k. mayb better is a wrong word.but the one that has scored will b d one with million dollar smiles at the end.

By: Anthropology

Anthropology — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:31:55 +0000

Just so you guys know, Zenit ALWAYS play like a traveling circus the first 5,10, sometimes 15 minutes. Their defense isn’t the best, but it ALWAYS looks the worst at the very start. Credit to Real management for seeing this (probably in countless “dvd’s”) and attacking from the get-go, and getting one before Zenit settled. But really, the pitch was the killer blow. Zenit players were slipping and sliding and that’s what caused the own goal, not some magic from Ruud.

By: john

john — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:38:28 +0000

Okay, maybe I was a bit harsh in my immediate reaction to the game. Corey’s right (from last post): to take three points off Zenit’s turf is an accomplishment no matter how you manage it. I would still say, despite the stats, that we were severely outplayed in the second half. And this is the second game in a row that when the result looked shaky, Schuster chose to lapse into purely defensive play. It’s perfectly legit as a tactic, it’s done by Chelsea, Man Utd, Roma, etc. all the time. But it’s not what I like to see from Real Madrid. I’d rather them highten the attack when beleagured than to shell up. But before anyone else makes the point, we were without Guti, Sneijder and Gago – so our attacking options were pretty few.

And for anyone who cares for La Liga as a whole, beyond just Real Madrid, Spanish teams have taken 22 of 24 possible points in the CL, the best representation so far. England has managed 18 of 24, Italy 13 of 24, France 2 of 18 (Yikes!) and Germany 6 of 12. It’s very early, but a good start.

By: realrock

realrock — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:01:03 +0000

i think vdv being substituted with javi garcia caused the unbalance. de la red was the only attacking player left in the midfield and as a result we weren’t able to go forward.only after his going off did zenit start to dominate. before that they were under some huge pressure.and i agree with corey , you can create all the chances you want but if you don’t score with them , you don’t deserve a win. zenit created lots of chances but call it luck or some tenacious defending ,the ball didn’t go in.and i think that the defence deserves some kudos for that.i also noticed two things in the game.before zenit dominated , you could clearly see the whole team defending as one and that didn’t take anything out of the attack as every1 with attacking responsibility would move forward.sure didn’t notice that last season.and two , everyone kept slipping more frequently than a klutz in an ice rink. that was rather funny.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:38:40 +0000

I find it interesting also that people seem to think we were completely outplayed for the whole game, when possession was relatively tight, and the total number of shots for each team was 16/14 in Zenits favour, 7/5 on target. It was a great game, very open and end to end, which they dominated only for the latter part really. It could have gone either way at any point in the game, but we decided to keep what we had, hence their real attacking threat towards the end.

By: Corey

Corey — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:22:37 +0000

I find in interesting that people think a team deserved three points when they created chances. Did they put them away? Did they have some sort of awful call against them that robbed them of points? Real may have clammed up, but sometimes thats what you have to do on the road, and I think with some luck, Real got the three points and thats all that matters. Zenit can keep creating chances all they want, but that wont get you out of the group stages.

By: jordan

jordan — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:11:04 +0000

Real were pretty good in the first 10 minutes, and pretty awful for the rest of the match. I think most people would say Zenit deserved 3 points after the amount of chances they created through Arshavin and Danny.