Holding Midfield
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About a year ago, we highlighted some similarities between the Real Madrid of today and the Galacticos of Florentino Perez’ last spell as president. Them winning their tenth Champions League would seem to disprove the idea but after their transfer dealings over the summer. In retrospect, Gareth Bale’s signing was the equivalent of Ronaldo rather than David Beckham – an upgrade over Fernando Morientes that took them to the 2003 La Liga title. Importantly though, they didn’t lose their Claude Makelele last year. Although Mesut Ozil was a key player, he never did much defensive work and Bale offered more attacking threat than the German provided. The balance of the team was kept in check by the trio of Xabi Alonso, Angel di Maria and Sami Khedira (Luka Modric appeared more frequently than Khedira but the point regarding Khedira’s role balancing the side still stands) – none of whom played the one man defence Makelele frequently had to but offered far more going forward. Like in that summer of 2003, the scale’s tipped too heavily in favour of the attack. Alonso left for Bayern Munich, Di Maria for Manchester United and Sami Khedira looks unlikely to start regularly after being […]
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